Allow and Test in Rails 8, super hackily

[jrochkind]

This life-support level of maintenance fix will test in Rails 8 only by using sprockets, even though rails new won't generate an app with sprockets. (You CAN still use sprockets with Rails 8).

This is not a good fix, it's really life-support only. But this gem has been getting little maintainance, interest, or use.

It will be accompanied by a README fix explainig present state of app, and how some (me) are working around to use without sprockets (copy all jS and CSS locally into app).

[cjcolvar]

This seems fine to me. I would really like to see a community effort to revive this gem probably starting with a conversation to figure out the current state of adoption and adapters in use. FWIW Avalon uses B-E (from a fork 🙁 ) with server-side directory, S3, google drive, and recently added support for sharepoint/teams based upon #418. (I guess that leaves box and dropbox as the only adapters Avalon doesn't use.)

[jrochkind]

Thanks @cjcolvar !

FWIW Avalon uses B-E (from a fork 🙁 ) with server-side directory, S3, google drive, and recently added support for sharepoint/teams based upon #418

Well, you could start by PR'ing what you've got in the fork and getting back on mainline!

Or we coudl even just switch entirely to your fork, just merge in your whole fork? If it's got working CI that passes on Rails 7.2/8? Or get your fork there?

I don't use sharepoint or have any credentials to it, so can't really review/test #418, but if you are using it and it's working, perhaps you could review/merge that one? (It might not be fresh enough anymore?)

Everyone's efforts being divided between different forks increases the challenge of putting together the resources to revive it!

[cjcolvar]

Once we get our next Avalon release out I'd like to get our changes back into core or switch to our fork if that's tenable. Maybe we could have a meeting in January to make a plan? I can try to gather interest on the tech call, slack, and email. Thoughts?

I appreciate your effort in keeping this gem afloat through rails upgrades!

[jrochkind]

Honestly the "social work" of figuring out who is using this and what they might want is the hardest part.

I have tried before, and have never found more than like one person actually using this and not a fork.

Last time I asked, the only person I found was @stkenny (i think? Is that the same person as skenny on slack?) who wrote:

Digital Repository of Ireland (Trinity College Dublin). Using 1.2.0, for no reason other than I haven't updated our Gemfile. Not the best case as I'm not using any of the drivers exactly. Using a very slightly modified version of the filesystem driver. https://github.com/Digital-Repository-of-Ireland/dri-batch-ingest/blob/main/lib/browse_everything/driver/sandbox_file_system.rb

i don't really have the energy to do the attempt at research and community building another time, but I support you in whatever, so long as I can keep using S3 adapter on Rails 8!

Does your fork have CI, and what's the latest rails it passes on if so?

Really the JS needs to be completely rewritten, and I don't necessarily have the energy for that now, especially if I can find hardly anyone that would actually use the code, as they are all on forks instead!

[cjcolvar]

Looks like we don't have CI setup for our fork 😞 , but FWIW we're using it with Rails 7.2.