Opening deer sometimes breaks spacemacs

[DvdMgr]

I recently opened an issue on the Spacemacs Github, describing a strange bug that makes emacs unusable, and that comes up when one opens a new window, opens deer in it, closes the window, reopens it and finally opens deer again - a precise reproduction guide using Spacemacs keybindings is provided on the original issue.

I'm opening this issue here in light of the latest development, described in this comment. In short, I found that commenting a call to ranger-revert in ranger.el solves the issue. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar enough with the ranger.el codebase to know whether this "fix" will have unintended consequences (it doesn't seem like it in my testing so far), so I'm also pointing out this "solution" here, in case someone that is well-versed in ranger.el can confirm this, or better identify the cause of the bug.

[sfavazza]

@purcell @Silex @tstenhaug @asok is this repository still maintained?

I would like to work on this issue (I am a spacemacs user), but would be nice to know that someone can make a review and allow a merge.

[purcell]

@punassuming It seems like you don't have much time to support this any more, and that there are many community contributions outstanding. In the current situation I'd support pointing the MELPA recipe at a more actively-maintained fork, but it's better if everyone buys in, and also if the existing issues/PRs get preserved.

Would you consider adding an external contributor to help you maintain the repo here, or transferring the repo to a new owner if someone is willing, or the https://github.com/emacsorphanage org, where we can figure out community ownership? (When a repo is transferred, the old path is redirected seamlessly by GitHub, so it doesn't break any downstream tooling or packaging.)

[sfavazza]

@purcell do you know whether @punassuming is the only one who can merge changes?

[purcell]

@sfavazza Not sure it's possible for any of us to know, sorry. If someone wants to start and commit to maintaining a fork, I'd be more than happy to point the MELPA recipe at that, and then if maintenance resumes here later the recipe could be switched back.

[sfavazza]

@purcell I understand the situation, I will check around the available forks, let's see if someone would like to take care of a "hopefully short" maintenance time.

In the event of no luck, I might take it in charge, but I need to better understand the code first. Do you have a good knowledge of the mechanisms the code is based on, I would be happy to address my questions about the code to you, if you have time.

[purcell]

I know almost nothing about this package, and am not a user, sorry. But if you have related emacs lisp questions, it's fine to ping me.