emacs / wxwidgets / elfeed2

Developer Daniel Silverman (nullprogram) announced he has stopped using Emacs and retired his Emacs-centric workflow — including no longer maintaining Elfeed — in favor of a more GUI- and LLM-friendly setup (KDE on Wayland, minimal browser, and a wxWidgets GUI replacement called Elfeed2). The post sparked discussion on Hacker News about trade-offs between power-user tools and lower-friction modern workflows, with commenters noting LLMs influenced the shift and debating Emacs’ strengths as a live Lisp REPL for tight LLM integration. The change matters because it affects maintainership of popular Emacs tools, highlights how AI and usability trends reshape developer environments, and may prompt new maintainers or alternative projects.

Nullprogram’s author announced retiring from Emacs after 20 years, replacing remaining Emacs workflows by rewriting key packages as native C++ GUI apps. He rebuilt Emacs’ calc as stackcalc (using GMP/MPFR for multi-precision) and rewrote Elfeed as Elfeed2, both cross-platform using wxWidgets and CMake/FetchContent, prioritizing native UI and lower runtime overhead than immediate-mode toolkits. He’s offering several Emacs packages for new maintainers (or they'll be archived) and explains choosing wxWidgets over Dear ImGui for always-on apps, noting tradeoffs like encoding quirks and some performance pitfalls. The writeup matters because it illustrates a developer-led migration from Emacs Lisp tooling to native C++ apps, toolchain choices, and maintenance/community handoff implications.

Nullprogram author announced retirement from Emacs after 20 years, replacing key personal Emacs packages by rewriting them as native C++ GUI apps. The author completed stackcalc (an Emacs Calc replacement using GMP/MPFR) and Elfeed2 (a multplatform feed reader that already surpasses the original), choosing wxWidgets for native look-and-feel and CMake/FetchContent for easy cross-platform builds. He’s offering stewardship of a number of actively used Emacs packages (Elfeed, bitpack, json-rpc, etc.) to new maintainers — otherwise they will be archived. The piece matters for developers and open-source maintainers because it highlights migration from extensible editor platforms to standalone native tools, choices in toolkits (wxWidgets vs Dear ImGui/Qt), and ongoing maintenance challenges for niche open-source projects.

After 20 years of daily Emacs use, the author has officially retired from Emacs, replacing core personal packages by rewriting key tooling as native C++ GUI apps (stackcalc and Elfeed2). Both new apps target multiple platforms using wxWidgets and CMake/FetchContent, and the calculator leverages GMP/MPFR for multi-precision. The author is seeking new maintainers for several Emacs packages (Elfeed, bitpack, json-rpc, and others) and will archive projects without takers. They chose wxWidgets over Dear ImGui for background-friendly GUI and native UI components, noting trade-offs like character encoding quirks. The move signals a shift from Emacs Lisp platform reliance toward modern C++ toolchains and cross-platform native GUIs.