On the maintainability of the Feynman package

[eduardo-rodrigues]

Hi all, I thought I would drop a comment on the maintainability/sustainability of the feynman package given that you are using it more and more in these lectures and it happens that I got in touch recently with the author. He stated that "Thank you for your email. I'm happy that my code is useful to the HEP community, but my primary interest is in condensed matter physics. ... but I remain available for any request for improvement to the code.". This is a warning as the package is unlikely to be very much maintained just now (check the dates of the last commits) and even less in the future.

What's your take? We, I mean the HEP community, might even suggest to take over the package? Dunno. Thoughts?

[welcome]

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[klieret]

Thanks a lot @eduardo-rodrigues for pointing this out, I didn't know.

I still consider the use of the Feynman package in this module a "nice to have bonus thing" rather than core content. Generally I feel like the focus of the module could still be improved by sidelining physics, data processing and similar things to really concentrate on matplotlib.

Regarding the future of the Feynman package: I also don't see any open issues there, so either it's barely used or it seems to be fulfilling its expectations. Pypi stats says there's around 20 downloads a month, but that number oftentimes seems inflated...

[klieret]

Until #65 actually happens we also currently don't show any code examples for Feynman.

I'm not an expert on creating Feynman diagrams, so I also can't tell how competitive feynman is vs the various LaTeX-based diagram creators...

[amanmdesai]

Hi all, I thought I would drop a comment on the maintainability/sustainability of the feynman package given that you are using it more and more in these lectures and it happens that I got in touch recently with the author. He stated that "Thank you for your email. I'm happy that my code is useful to the HEP community, but my primary interest is in condensed matter physics. ... but I remain available for any request for improvement to the code.". This is a warning as the package is unlikely to be very much maintained just now (check the dates of the last commits) and even less in the future.

What's your take? We, I mean the HEP community, might even suggest to take over the package? Dunno. Thoughts?

Hi @eduardo-rodrigues,

Thanks very much for this information.

I find the feynman package easier to use compared to the latex based package (e.g., tikz-feynman).

If there is an effort to maintain the feynman package for the HEP community for the future, then I would be interested to participate in that effort.​​

[eduardo-rodrigues]

I still consider the use of the Feynman package in this module a "nice to have bonus thing" rather than core content. Generally I feel like the focus of the module could still be improved by sidelining physics, data processing and similar things to really concentrate on matplotlib.

I tend to agree with you - it is a "nice to have bonus thing".

Regarding the future of the Feynman package: I also don't see any open issues there, so either it's barely used or it seems to be fulfilling its expectations. Pypi stats says there's around 20 downloads a month, but that number oftentimes seems inflated...

Activity is indeed not trememdous. I often look for similar status with PePy, see https://pepy.tech/project/feynman in this case. You get similar conclusions from there.

[eduardo-rodrigues]

I find the feynman package easier to use compared to the latex based package (e.g., tikz-feynman).

I can't comment as I have not used tikz-feynman or similar in a while ;-).

If there is an effort to maintain the feynman package for the HEP community for the future, then I would be interested to participate in that effort.​​

I am not aware. But it would be a possibility, IMO, to get in touch with the author and see if he would be interested in somebody or a group of people taking over the package ... Else it would seem good to let him know that usage is likely to increase and how he foresees to maintain the package alone, if. My 2 cents :-).

[stale]

This issue or pull request has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. Please manually close it, if it is no longer relevant, or ask for help or support to help getting it unstuck. Let me bring this to the attention of @klieret @wdconinc @michmx for now.