Fork or replace dependency yajl?

[Christoph Grüninger <foss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Xen developers,

you are using the dependency yajl (yet another json library, [1]) to 
parse JSON files. The project seems abandoned with the last commit 10 
years ago, the last release over 11 years ago, and 75 open pull 
requests. Packaging yajl requires patches, e.g., to make it compatible 
with CMake 4.0.
There are some forks but none has replaced the old one yet [2].

I think there are three paths forward:
1. Xen could pick a prominent fork and use it as its main dependency.
2. Xen could create a fork of its own, hopefully attracting more people 
interested in an maintained successor of yajl.
3. Switch to a different JSON parser library that remained healthy.

Sure, you could stick to option 4., do nothing an offload the burden to 
fix yajl to distribution packagers.
Xen is an important project and its decision can create momentum that 
might lead other projects.
[1] https://github.com/lloyd/yajl
[2] https://github.com/lloyd/yajl/issues/252

Kind regards,
Christoph

--
Most customers will not accept source code with compile errors in it.
                 Dan Saks, CppCon 2016 (https://youtu.be/D7Sd8A6_fYU)