bb-Ricardo
Maintainer wanted - NOT sunsetting this repository by 31.10.2025
Hi,
I thought about how to write this, but the only thing which comes to my mind is: It doesn't spark joy anymore.
It is personally difficult to keep up with the amount of changes in NetBox. I neither have the environment to test all use cases nor do I work in this field anymore. The bug reports and feature request are piling up and I can't find enough time to take care of them. It was a fun ride but it has to come to an end.
But I also don't want to do a straight rug pull and therefore would be willing to hand over this repo to new maintainers. This could happen under following conditions:
- if you are interested then I would be happy to assist with reviewing and merging PRs which fix outstanding bugs or adds new features
- if this happens in decent code quality and dedication then I finally would transfer this repository
If this is not possible then I would archive this repo by the end of October 2025.
Hence the license, anyone is permitted to create and provide a fork. I would also be happy to link to it if desired.
It doesn't fell great to put down my most popular repository on GitHub but this uncertain state doesn't help anyone either.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Although I haven't used netbox-sync directly, I still greatly appreciate the amount of work you've put into building and maintaining it. I wish you the best in whatever you will be pursuing in the future!
Hey @bb-Ricardo , its sad to read that announcement, but also totally relatable! Thank you so much for your work on this project, we are using it since 2021 and it makes our life way easyer! I would love to take care of it in the future, but sadly my capacity won't let me do so and i really hope, someone picks up the work. Thanks for this approach in handling the situation, well done! Maybe consider pinning this issue as well and adding a hint into the readme, so more people notice it? Take care and thanks again!
Hi @bb-Ricardo. First, a very big thanks for the huge work you did on this repository! It's indeed sad to have to put down his repository, but it's also very understandable, especially considering that you no longer work in the field! Thanks for the way you're handling it. As @Apfelwurm said, I think it would be a good idea to pin the issue and add a link in the README.
Regarding the repository maintenance, I do want to try to help maintaining it, because we will certainly try to continue using it on our infrastructure. But sadly I'm pretty sure I won't have enough time to do more than 50% of the job you were doing. So, if one or two others are willing to continue maintaining the project, I would gladly be part of it.
Hi @bb-Ricardo, First of all, thanks for providing such a solid starting base. With a few internal tweaks, we've started using this in our infrastructure — so I’ve already taken a look into the source code and logic inside :)
Since I won't have time to cover even 30% of the work you've been doing, I think I can only contribute as part of the maintenance team — for now, I'm running CI/CD for daily vCenter → NetBox synchronization.
So @joachimBurket, how many more people do we need on board?
This was actually a tiny shock to read - this project has been so valuable, helpful and great to use. Even if it's just for my own personal use. Thank you so much for all the effort, @bb-Ricardo!
I'm not that familiar with the code base and pretty much beginner-level with python, I'm happy to contribute a bit of my time if needed. I might be able to cover some situations in my environment.
@bb-Ricardo Just wondering - would you want to step back entirely from this project, or maybe continue development in a shared, distributed team where everyone is trying to get some time?
Hi @bb-Ricardo
We (Sol1) are a Netbox Export partner and would be interested in taking over maintenance duties. At the very least we will fork the repo and keep it working against current Netbox versions and contribute to whatever becomes the canonical upstream. Let me know if you want to chat further. Thanks!
Hi @afoster,
And thank you for the offer. I'm interested and can see that you started opening PRs, which is fantastic.
Please send me an email and we can chat about it.
@bb-Ricardo that's sad news of course but is right that you move on with your life and other cool projects that attracts you more! I'm very happy that I had the possibility to collaborate with you since the early stage. It was amazing thank you! You got my email, please contact me if you need some help to move netbox-sync forward!
I just found out about this project after painfully building it from scratch for my own usecase, I'd be willing to help out here and there with bugfixes & smaller features, if other people are up for it because this repo has been a godsend for me and it would be a shame to see it archived.
Hi,
I just wanted to give a little update on this matter.
I'm in contact with @afoster to move forward with future development. Therefore this project will not be archived. This still leaves some pain points which would be great to solve to improve maintainability.
A big issue is testing: It is quite difficult to have access to vCenter instances which have configured all the different scenarios which are supported within the code. It would be great if anyone could provide copies of vCenter instances which could be used for testing. It is possible to create mockups with govc. These mockups can then be used in vcsim instances which would simulate a vCenter instance. This would provide a deterministic test environment where undesired changes could be discovered. This could also result in proper test pipelines.
Additionally GitHub workflows to release docker containers for new versions are missing and would be a great contribution.
Would anyone be able to help with one of these topics?
Thank you
Cheers Ricardo
I'd be down with providing & configuring the testing instances
That would be amazing, thank you very much.
@bb-Ricardo
maybe its off topic but since I plan to deploy netbox and one of the feature we are going to use in netbox custom object, is netbox-sync working with version 4.4 or it supports only 4.2 ?