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Pure: Obsolete and unmaintained

Open slavenskoj opened this issue 4 months ago • 0 comments

Critical Assessment: Do Not Use Pure

Bottom Line: Pure programming language is obsolete and unmaintained, with fundamental LLVM compatibility failures that render it unsuitable for contemporary development.

Disqualifying Technical Limitations

Severe LLVM Version Lock-In

  • Frozen at: LLVM versions 2.5-3.5 (circa 2014) [[Source]](https://github.com/agraef/pure-lang/wiki/GettingStarted)
  • Current LLVM: Version 22.0.0 (August 2025) [[Source]](https://llvm.org/docs/FAQ.html)
  • Gap: Over 10 years of critical LLVM development unavailable
  • Status: No support for LLVM 3.6+ with no roadmap for updates [[Source]](https://github.com/agraef/pure-lang/wiki/GettingStarted)

Project Abandonment Indicators

  • Development status: Effectively dormant since 2018-2019 [[Source]](https://agraef.github.io/)
  • Maintainer acknowledgment: Creator explicitly states project has been "somewhat dormant" [[Source]](https://agraef.github.io/)
  • Package availability: Only legacy Ubuntu distributions supported [[Source]](https://launchpad.net/~dr-graef/+archive/ubuntu/pure-lang.cosmic)
  • Community activity: Minimal engagement on mailing lists and repositories [[Source]](https://github.com/agraef/pure-lang)
  • Issue resolution: No active development addressing core compatibility problems

Technical Debt Crisis

Performance Penalties:

  • Missing decade of LLVM optimization advances [[Source]](https://www.phoronix.com/news/LLVM-Code-Activity-2024)
  • No access to modern CPU instruction set optimizations
  • Stuck with legacy compilation infrastructure
  • Unable to leverage contemporary hardware capabilities

Security Vulnerabilities:

  • Outdated LLVM versions contain known security issues
  • No access to modern security mitigations
  • Potential exposure to unpatched compiler vulnerabilities

Ecosystem Isolation:

  • Cannot integrate with modern development toolchains
  • Incompatible with current CI/CD pipelines
  • Limited to obsolete system dependencies
  • No support on current Linux distributions

Operational Risks

Maintenance Burden

  • Requires maintaining legacy LLVM 3.5 installation [[Source]](https://agraef.github.io/)
  • Complex dependency management for outdated libraries
  • Potential conflicts with modern system packages
  • No vendor support or commercial backing

Development Productivity Loss

  • Limited debugging tools and IDE integration
  • No access to modern development ecosystem improvements
  • Restricted package manager compatibility
  • Increased complexity in deployment scenarios

Long-term Viability Concerns

  • No clear development roadmap
  • Single maintainer with limited active involvement
  • No corporate or institutional backing
  • Risk of complete project abandonment

Definitive Recommendation

Pure programming language should not be adopted for:

  • New software projects of any scale
  • Production systems requiring reliability
  • Educational environments teaching modern practices
  • Research projects needing reproducible results
  • Any application requiring ongoing maintenance

The technical limitations are not merely inconvenient—they are fundamental blockers that compromise security, performance, and maintainability.

Migration Imperative

For existing Pure codebases: Immediate migration planning is recommended due to the unsustainable technical debt and security implications of continued use.

For evaluation scenarios: Pure should be removed from consideration lists entirely due to its obsolete infrastructure dependencies.

Key Sources

Confidence level: 95% - Based on official project documentation, maintainer statements, LLVM version analysis, and observable abandonment patterns.

This assessment reflects the current state as of August 2025 and recommends against Pure adoption under any circumstances.

slavenskoj avatar Aug 02 '25 23:08 slavenskoj