Intent to retire - findbugs / findbugs-bcel / findbugs-contrib / eclipse-findbugs

[Richard Fearn <richardfearn@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

I'm writing to say that I intend to retire the following packages:

* findbugs

* findbugs-bcel

* findbugs-contrib

* eclipse-findbugs

The rationale behind this is:

* The last FindBugs release was in March 2015 [1].

* Upstream has been dead since 2016 [2].

* The project was forked in 2017 [3] as SpotBugs [4].

* FindBugs depends on an old snapshot of Apache Commons BCEL (packaged as findbugs-bcel). I don't think it's possible (or worthwhile) to get FindBugs to build against upstream BCEL.

* It no longer builds against the latest rawhide versions of ASM and Hamcrest.

* Trying to maintain FindBugs and keep it building/working against the latest versions of Java libraries isn't really a good use of anyone's time (and there is no upstream to contribute patches back to).

* findbugs-contrib (known upstream as fb-contrib [5]) is a FindBugs plugin that provides additional detectors, and is of no use without FindBugs itself.

* Likewise, eclipse-findbugs makes FindBugs available in the Eclipse IDE, and is of no use without FindBugs being available.

As far as I can tell, nothing else depends on this set of packages:

$ sudo dnf repoquery --recursive --whatrequires findbugs
Last metadata expiration check: 1:11:19 ago on Sat 29 May 2021 23:00:52 BST.
ant-findbugs-0:3.0.1-25.fc34.noarch
eclipse-findbugs-0:3.0.1-23.fc34.noarch
eclipse-findbugs-contrib-0:7.4.7-6.fc34.noarch
findbugs-contrib-0:7.4.7-6.fc34.noarch
findbugs-contrib-samples-0:7.4.7-6.fc34.noarch
findbugs-tools-0:3.0.1-25.fc34.noarch

$ sudo dnf repoquery --recursive --whatrequires findbugs-bcel
Last metadata expiration check: 1:11:24 ago on Sat 29 May 2021 23:00:52 BST.
ant-findbugs-0:3.0.1-25.fc34.noarch
eclipse-findbugs-0:3.0.1-23.fc34.noarch
eclipse-findbugs-contrib-0:7.4.7-6.fc34.noarch
findbugs-0:3.0.1-25.fc34.noarch
findbugs-contrib-0:7.4.7-6.fc34.noarch
findbugs-contrib-samples-0:7.4.7-6.fc34.noarch
findbugs-tools-0:3.0.1-25.fc34.noarch

$ sudo dnf repoquery --recursive --whatrequires findbugs-contrib
Last metadata expiration check: 1:11:31 ago on Sat 29 May 2021 23:00:52 BST.
eclipse-findbugs-contrib-0:7.4.7-6.fc34.noarch
findbugs-contrib-samples-0:7.4.7-6.fc34.noarch

$ sudo dnf repoquery --recursive --whatrequires eclipse-findbugs
Last metadata expiration check: 1:11:39 ago on Sat 29 May 2021 23:00:52 BST.
eclipse-findbugs-contrib-0:7.4.7-6.fc34.noarch

It's been interesting keeping FindBugs alive since I picked it up in 2010 (11 years ago... where has the time gone?!), but the world has moved on (to SpotBugs), and I think it's time to let it go.

Regards,

Rich

[1] http://findbugs.sourceforge.net/

[2] https://mailman.cs.umd.edu/pipermail/findbugs-discuss/2016-November/004321.html

[3] https://mailman.cs.umd.edu/pipermail/findbugs-discuss/2017-September/004383.html

[4] https://spotbugs.github.io/

[5] https://github.com/mebigfatguy/fb-contrib

--

Richard Fearn
richardfearn@xxxxxxxxx

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