MailCatcher runs a super simple SMTP server

I use Mailcatcher for almost ten years now and never had a problem with it. Maybe is doesn't need maintenance?

Same for Mailhog

There's no rush to move away from MailCatcher or MailHog, but if you're not using those solutions already I see no reason to use them over the maintained options.

Try add it to the Gemfile of a modern Rails project, the dependencies are very out of date and it won’t install.

Docs say

> Please don't put mailcatcher into your Gemfile. It will conflict with your applications gems at some point.

It's not designed to go in your Gemfile

gem install mailcatcher

:-)

> I see no reason to use them over the maintained options

Things that don't change over a longer time period can be more comfortable sometimes. Especially things you use often and build up a sort of "muscle memory" about.

You ignored first part of that sentence.

"Not changing" has value in its own right.

Yeah, people underestimate the value of “finished” software: in an ecosystem with lots of stable dependencies, there’s very little reason for useful software to change constantly.

I always run Mailcatcher as a standalone Docker image (I'm already using Docker Compose for development), with no issues.

Yes, you definitely don't want to risk closing up all those holes discovered in the last 10 years, lots of people might be left out of your servers.

Even "finished" software needs maintenance. Nothing is ever bug-free so needs fixes. And it doesn't live in a vacuum, the ecosystem evolves and continuous adjustments are needed when APIs evolve or libraries change.

In well-written software, the maintenance burden is low, but it's not zero. Without any maintenance, you can maybe run some piece of software in some closed-off container for a while, but it will keep rotting away and eventually you won't even be able to compile it anymore.

> Even "finished" software needs maintenance.

What about "GNU Hello", never finished? Clearly this isn't true for 100% of all software, so the only thing we can conclude is that it either "depends" and/or is very subjective.

> when APIs evolve or libraries change.

If you live/work inside an ecosystem that favor stability over "evolving APIs", you can actually be able to use libraries that are decades old, that doesn't have any bugs for the stuff they expose and things just work. I mostly experience this in the Clojure ecosystem, but I'm sure it's true for other ecosystems too.

> Nothing is ever bug-free

Neither is the maintained modern software. If the bugs that there are don't affect you then you don't actually need the fixes.

Does "small burst of activity and dependency updates twice a year" seem inadequate to you? That's the scale of maintenance that the project in question seems to exhibit, which is what we're apparently calling not maintained.

>> What about "GNU Hello", never finished?

Most recently removing an outdated dependency?

> 2024-07-02 18:04:21 -0700 > maint: remove the obsolete gettext module

https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/hello.git/commit/?id=24225...

Commenter was just making the fair point that the dependencies are out of date.

Maintenance doesn't always mean UI redesigns or non-compatible config changes. Sometimes it is just fixing bugs and updating or replacing old dependencies.

> be able to use libraries that are decades old, that doesn't have any bugs for the stuff they expose and things just work.

Acknowledging that all software has bugs is the first step to be able to produce high quality.

> I mostly experience this in the Clojure ecosystem, but I'm sure it's true for other ecosystems too.

How many decades exactly has your clojure existed without any bugs?