Is this project alive or abandoned?

[yermulnik]

Given latest release (1.7.0) is almost two years old (Aug 23, 2021) and even Docker image of 1.7.0 isn't in Docker Hub, is the project still alive or had been abandoned?

[drlsdee]

I'd not say that the project is completely abandoned. Rather, it looks "hibernated". The last commit was in November 2022, the latest version is 1.8.0, but it is not in the repository tags. But it works, at least under Windows.

Meanwhile, the librdkafka project is actively developing, as are other Confluent client libraries written in other languages: .NET, Python, whatever.

It looks like libraries are the core product and kafkacat is just an example tool that many people using in their work (yep, me too).

[watson28]

It looks quite dead to me: The last commit was 2 years ago.

Is there an alternative CLI someone could recommend that is non-JVM-based?

[yermulnik]

Is there an alternative CLI someone could recommend that is non-JVM-based?

Some that I've found in my notes (didn't check whether these are still alive or not and I don't remember how much these are as good as kcat):

• https://github.com/qiujiangkun/kafcat (Rust fork of kcat)
• https://github.com/deviceinsight/kafkactl
• https://github.com/comradequinn/klient
• https://github.com/streamdal/plumber
• https://github.com/hash89/kafka-client
• https://github.com/birdayz/kaf