Is it possible to give maintenance to a Kata even if the author went inactive?

[janpieuler]

Hi folks,

I found a Kata where the random tests in Go generate invalid test cases.
I also see, on the "Issues Reported" tab, that the user UlrichBerntien has already reported it 3 years ago.
However, it seems that the Kata's author, is inactive since 2022.

Kata: https://www.codewars.com/kata/56f3ed90de254a2ca7000e20/

Issue: The input should be sorted but it's not, sorting the input manually is not enough to get a solution working since the tests don't validate it properly anyway.

Is there a way for the community to fix those tests, even though the author is not active anymore?

[hobovsky]

Yes, every user can create a fix for every language they solved. At the top right corner there's the Fork button which creates a fork of the kata in selected language:

After forking you can change the code and publish the changes for review. Additionally, you announce the fix in the kata discourse (with a post labelled as suggestion) and ideally also on Codewars Discord in the #fixing channel. Someone will review the fork and if it's good, merge the changes to the kata.

[janpieuler]

Ah got it, thank you!

The forking option won't appear to me since I didn't solve it (because it's not possible to solve as far as I know)

So I guess forfeiting the Kata is the only way to be able to fix it. Is this correct?

Hum... I can only guess what the bug on the tests is at the moment, but I strongly suspect that the tests are iterating over a hashmap, a couple of times, and assuming that the order of iteration is deterministic.
This used to be true in Go, for maps with 8 or less elements, up to some years ago, but it's not true anymore in newer versions of the language.

[hobovsky]

If solving a kata is impossible or a kata has any other bug which prevents correct solutions form passing, it can still be fixed by privileged users, and you do not need to forfeit it. You can raise an issue on the kata which describes the problem, and a moderator can fork and fix it without completing it. Ideally, you would also let others know about the problem by messaging at #fixing channel of Codewars Discord. It is also possible that another user was able to complete the kata with some other solution not affected by the bug, or with a solution which has the same bug, or before the bug appeared - such users can still fork and fix the kata.