What has happened to Clipper2?
Why haven’t there been any updates in the last 6 months?
The short answer is that I have run out of steam with software development, so it is time to hand Clipper2's development over to someone else.
Software development has been a wonderful hobby of mine for almost 50 years, but it is no longer fun. Six months ago I released a new triangulation module as part of my Clipper2 library. It had a few bugs, but I thought they would be easy to fix. They were. But every time I fixed bugs I found more. I spent 3 months on this, even rewriting the entire triangulation code several times. But after 3 months, and still unable to find a robust solution, I needed a break. And I’ve now had a 3 month break. But the prospect of returning to Clipper2 no longer feels like a challenge, only a responsibility.
I’m painfully aware of a number of pending Pull Requests. And thank you to the developers who submitted them, especially for the PR’s that will significantly improve performance. Given that these PR's have passed validation testing, I could just merge them. However, I've always reviewed PR's first, as I’ve resisted merging code that I don’t fully understand. As I’m no longer keen to even review PR’s, I would prefer to pass this to whoever takes over (assuming someone does).
Clipper2 has quite a number of forks, so my current plan (though I’m open to other suggestions) is to freeze my Clipper2 repository here, and announce an ‘official’ fork for future maintenance and development. That fork would have a prominently displayed link to it from this repository.
I hope to find someone who has a solid background in C++ development, someone who not only has a vested interest in Clipper2, but will have the time and interest to take on its active maintenance, at least in the short to medium term. I’d give preference to someone who has already made contributions.
I specify C++ because I don’t think it is realistic to continue Clipper2 as a three language (C++, C# and Delphi) library. (This library only evolved because it motivated me to learn other languages.) At the same time, I hope that whoever takes over will continue to provide links to Clipper2 translations.
Please email me if you are interested in taking over Clipper2 maintenance and development.
Cheers, Angus
Edit (22 October):
I'm delighted to annouce that Seth Hillbrand from https://www.kipro-pcb.com has agreed to take over Clipper's future maintenance and development. I will make a more formal announcement about this very soon, once we've sorted out how we want to manage this.