Read 2026-10-04
awesomewm/awesome: technical due diligence, read from its repository
What Borehole read in awesomewm/awesome's code and history at 0a5e50c: its licence, security advisories, releases, review practice, tests, dependencies and operations. Every finding cites the file and line it rests on. The full report also covers the team and asks the questions the code cannot answer.
| Dimension | Rating |
|---|---|
| Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance | strong |
| Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity | strong |
| Product & Engineering Maturity | adequate |
| Security & Reliability Posture | adequate |
| Observability & Operations | not assessable |
| Fit with the Acquirer | not assessable |
What the repository says
- No release for 93 months while development continues
LICENSE: Relicensed: MIT → GPL-2.0 (2007-09-12)
Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance
strongobjects/client.c is 4,734 lines, 87× this codebase's median file
adequateThe median source file here is 54 lines. 14 files exceed 1,000 lines, the largest being 4,734. Size is not a defect on its own — some problems genuinely live in one place — but these are where merge conflicts, review fatigue and single-owner knowledge concentrate, and they are the first thing that slows an inheriting engineer down.
objects/client.c:1 — 4,734 lines (87× median) |
lib/awful/client.lua:1 — 1,972 lines (36× median) |
lib/awful/tag.lua:1 — 1,969 lines (36× median) |
objects/screen.c:1 — 1,918 lines (35× median) |
lib/awful/placement.lua:1 — 1,703 lines (31× median) |
Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity
strongAlmost no process scaffolding exists in the repository
adequateOf five ordinary markers — CI workflows, CODEOWNERS, a pull-request template, pre-commit hooks, contribution guidance — 1 is present: CI workflows. Branch protection itself is a GitHub setting rather than a file, so this is a reading of proxies and not of the rules themselves. What it does establish is that the process is not written down anywhere a new engineer would find it.
| 1 of 5 markers present across 1,265 tracked files |
Product & Engineering Maturity
adequateNo release for 93 months while development continues
adequateThe last tag, v4.3, was cut 2806 days before the survey; the typical gap between releases was 144 days, and 11 commits landed in the last 90 days. Users run the last release, not this code.
| last tag v4.3 |
Security & Reliability Posture
adequateNone of the standard security guard rails are configured
adequateThere is no disclosure policy, no automated dependency updates, no named code owners and no pre-commit configuration. None of these is load-bearing on its own. Their collective absence says that security posture here is whatever the current team happens to remember to do, which is not a posture that survives the team changing.
| checked 5 kinds of guard rail across 1,265 tracked files; 0 present |
Relicensed: MIT → GPL-2.0 (2007-09-12)
adequateThe root licence changed 1 time(s). The latest terms restrict what users, hosts or a buyer may do in ways the earlier ones did not. Code taken under the old terms stays under them, so both matter in diligence.
Observability & Operations
not assessableNot rated: only 4 of 16 checks could reach a conclusion here; the rest do not apply to this repository or could not read it.
Fit with the Acquirer
not assessableNot rated: structurally not assessable from a repository.
Read more, or read your own
The full report on awesomewm/awesome: every dimension, the questions for the room, and the audit log.
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