I would like to support the new java wrapper maintainer, Alejandro with the task of maintaining java-atk-wrapper since the whole module needs updating having been abandoned back in 2011[1].
FWIW, I added myself as maintainer because the current ones stopped to work on gnome accessibility a long time ago. But due my lack of time, my work as maintainer would be similar to my small phase as Caribou maintainer: review the patches that the community upload to bugzilla (so they don't got forgotten) and doing releases if needed.
That has value. I can help with the patch testing and updating to lighten the load. A lot of features seem to rely on this module so it's definitely worth saving I think. The patches which got reviews will probably also need to be checked again before they go in having been left a long time in case they are no longer good to go.
The first commit since 2011, were just this week and, it's fair to say that the module has generally got a bit old and suboptimal over time.[2]
Around 2010 hackfest Ke Wang was providing commits steadily, but in the end he also got sucked in the Sun/Orable debacle.
My knowledge of the 'debacle' is limited but overall the impression I got was that money got injected into java and when that ran out, developers disappeared and everything reliant on the java was left to manage with whatever state things had got to from 2011 to the present day.
The original investment that was made into the java and those products reliant on it seems a like a really a strong motivation to see it gets picked back up. It seems a shame to let all the spent resources go to nothing when there potentially is a resource that can be improved on and used to the benefit of the products which use it.
I reckon it would really be great to put a bit more brainspace and time into improving things for java (by making use of what the most current java API can offer, for example). I won't have much time over the next 3 months but generally, I would like to have a go at helping get java-atk-wrapper up to scratch when I can, as long as that would not be a problem at all. Does anybody have any thoughts about the module itself?
With your patch, we got java-atk-wrapper compilable. Next step is confirm that it is working.
This also makes sense. I suspect that it would be good to compile list of products that currently depend on the wrapper (if this does not already exist?) to try to define comprehensive testing strategy with those in mind.
Thanks
Magdalen
