Libxml2 is now officially unmaintained after its long-time maintainer stepped down, leaving the widely used XML library without active development.

In mid-September, we reported that Nick Wellnhofer, the long-time maintainer of the widely used XML parsing library libxml2, planned to step down from the project. A few days ago, that change became official.

When looking at one of the latest commits in the project’s GitLab repository, you can now see the following notice:

“This project is unmaintained and has known security issues (https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxml2/-/issues/346). It is foolish to use this software to process untrusted data.”

  • ulternoEnglish
    61·
    2 months ago

    Considering that qt6-webengine also depends upon it, I guess someone will come and pick it up soon, or maybe they will just create an alternative?

      • ulternoEnglish
        111·
        2 months ago

        Well, there’s already sax, xml-rs and rust-xml.
        How many more do you want?

        Better off giving more attention to those that already exist than making more rewrites.

        • onlinepersona
          21·
          2 months ago

          Didn’t know about those. Thanks for bringing them to my attention. I wonder how they compare to libxml2.

          • ulternoEnglish
            31·
            2 months ago

            I don’t know much to compare either, just did a quick search.
            I might end up checking some out later when I start doing more stuff with Rust, but nothing for now.