grote/Transportr

The Future of the Transportr App

Opened this issue · 36 comments

Echolon commented

I started a general discussion on a vision for the app here

Dear Transportr Developers & Maintainers,
Dear Transportr Community,
Dear everyone interested,

I would like to raise a general topic concerning the future of this actual beautiful and very useful app that used to get me home and to my points of interest beyond my home-zone and in many countries for years.

To my understanding the development has very much declined if not stopped about two years ago :-(
That's sad, but I also understand that there are good reasons behind it. So far I understood there was

  • lack of interest from user side
  • lack of support from community
  • which results in a lack of motivation
  • other projects I assume

Please correct me if I am wrong in any way. Of course, no blame or offense!

I would love to support changing the situation. I am not a developer per se, but I am certainly good at setting and supporting a new framework and conditions how we as a community could set a new direction of Transportr. Moreover, I see that there are also certainly people try to up-streaming pull requests.

Would you be interested? Is that something feasible? What could we do?
I think the first steps could be to summarize the current shortcomings and get a clear picture of hurdles the development experience.

To my superficial understand I see the following points to tackle:

  • Discuss if there is interest on a way forward
  • If so, spread the word that we are try to start over again
  • Review communication and promotion of the app
    • I believe the outstanding good idea of this software has received way to few attention in general. Communication through the Transportr webpage, Twitter and maybe even Mastodon chould be reconsidered. The community could certainly help to upstream input here.
  • Discuss and promote donations
  • Consider funds alike the NLnet or OpenTech fund
  • Call previous contributors
  • Discuss maintenance
  • Discuss further development (but this is certainly not a first thing to discuss)

@grote and @ialokim many thanks for your efforts and devlepment of this app! Would you be interested in anyway to support such a discussion and reconsideration of how this could get a new chance? Do you even share my thoughts?

It would be a pleasure for me to serve and organize around this. Projects like the StreetComplete app managed to build a great serving community around that app.

Looking forward to revive this idea of modern public transport around the world.

Best regards,
echo

I know its not usually the best thing to do, but I hope it is okay that I mention previous contributors since 2022. Otherwise, I apologize.

@htgoebel
@ashtanko
@Altonss
@pt2121
@nomq1
@mimi89999
@1305533243
@aha999

Acknowledgments
Please check the following boxes with an x if they apply:

  • The feature I want to propose would be useful for the majority of users, not only for me personally.
  • I am aware that Transportr is mostly developed by one person in their unpaid spare time.
  • I can help myself to get this feature implemented or know someone who wants to do it.
  • If I want to add support for a new region or country, I checked that this is already available in public-transport-enabler and know the process described on the Transportr homepage.
Altonss commented

Thanks a lot @Echolon for your message! I totally support this idea, that we should revitalise the development of this project!
Personally, I would love to be able to use Transportr more in my daily life, and to recommend it to my friends and family, knowing that in the long run the application will be maintained and as stable as possible! I think I'm not the only one in this situation!
Thank you to the maintainers who have done all they can in their spare time to contribute to Transportr <3

I think that an initiative to share this maintenance load, and that an active organisation federating the developer and user community would be very beneficial to move forward and make Transportr an even more useful and used software :) I'm available to contribute to this (in organisation, communication, bug triaging, and a little bit of code and testing)!

I look forward to your responses, in the hope of a good future for Transportr!

  • 👍5
grote commented

Thanks for opening this ticket and your effort. To me the situation is quite simple: You need to find someone with the motivation, available time and skills to take over maintenance of Transportr. Once you have that, you can do more stuff, but this is really the first and most important thing you need.

  • ❤️5
Echolon commented
grote commented

Could you specify your requirements/ expectations? Could it be multiple persons?

I think considering the challenge, we can't be picky here. But having the right skills to maintain an Android app will be kinda essential.

Furthermore, would you agree to process communication through e.g. Twitter? And maybe even pin this issues?

Done.

Echolon commented
  • 👍1
ialokim commented

Thanks for getting active on this one! Unfortunately, Transportr has been pretty low on my priority list in the last two years, mostly since I haven't been using the app myself. But I would definitely love to see Transportr moving forward!

The first thing to do would probably be to release a new version with the calendar fixes included. This should be pretty straightforward to prepare for someone with a working Android development environment, following the checklist in the PR template (see #736 as an example).

  • 👍1
pt2121 commented

I am new to this project but I'm an experienced Android dev and I'm happy to take a stab at this and help maintain the project.

Echolon commented
ialokim commented

Can I help to get this list from the issue into e.g. a MR template / readme?

It actually already is one: https://github.com/grote/Transportr/blob/master/.github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE/release.md

basic overlay on start-up after updating

There is the changelog overlay already, some information could be included there I guess. Not sure if it supports hyperlinks though.

Altonss commented

The first thing to do would probably be to release a new version with the calendar fixes included. This should be pretty straightforward to prepare for someone with a working Android development environment, following the checklist in the PR template (see #736 as an example).

I already managed to build the app with Android Studio, so had a working Android development environment :) Would be happy to help! I will try to do it ;)

Echolon commented
Altonss commented

I see the situation as you said: Let's get a first small release.

Totally agree with this!

To me, the next steps after this would be:

  • finally bring back Transportr to F-Droid, using maplibre
  • then working on existing PRs/high priority bugs
  • also: communicating (on Twitter, the Fediverse, other channels...) about the project
  • 👍1
grote commented

To me, the next steps after this would be:

I'd try a small release (in coordination with @Prat) first, just with updated public transport enabler to resolve issues with several networks.

  • 👍2
Altonss commented

To me, the next steps after this would be:

I'd try a small release (in coordination with @Prat) first, just with updated public transport enabler to resolve issues with several networks.

Yes it's what I meant too :) (was just talking about the steps after this)

pt2121 commented

Hi all, thanks for keeping the conversation going.
From what I gathered so far, we'd try a small release.

I will create a PR to update the public transport enabler and then I will create a PR for the release using this template.
I just read some old conversations. It looks like you usually do this in the same PR.

Just fyi, my name is Prat but my username is @pt2121 🙂 . look forward to working with y'all.

pt2121 commented

Looked into the release a bit and here are some issues that I ran into so far.

  • The latest PTE is broken on jitpack.
    • I believe this commit caused it. The issue was mentioned here
    • I think the latest commit we can use is this one or we can look into fixing the issue in the PTE repo.
  • Google Play requires targetSdkVersion to be 31 or higher.
    • Should we update the target version now? or, should we only release on F-Droid for now?
    • updating the target version would take some effort and time
  • I probably need the permission for Transifex e.g. to pull strings. Can someone give me the API token?

Any thoughts on these?

  • 👍1
Altonss commented
  • Should we update the target version now? or, should we only release on F-Droid for now?

Publishing to F-Droid is not possible for now, see #826, so I think the best thing to do would be to raise the target version.

  • 👍1
  • 👀1
Altonss commented

For the organisational part, how would you like to proceed with e.g. the labelling of issues, closing of issues, handling of PRs. Would you mind according some access to those features in the repo, maybe first only for triaging issues? This could help distribute the maintainance load!

Echolon commented
  • 👍1
Altonss commented

Yes that would be great. But rather let me spent time here and you can save it for more important things.

We can simply distribute the tasks among different people :)

  • 👍1
Echolon commented
  • 👍2
pt2121 commented

@grote @ialokim I opened a PR to update the target SDK version since Google Play now requires 31+. Can you take a look when having a chance?
Also, I have some other questions here.
@Echolon @Altonss maybe we can discuss about the process and work distribution in discussions or in another thread as needed. (I just think this one is getting long)

  • 👍1
Echolon commented
  • 👍1
Altonss commented

For 2.1.5 release, the thread is here: #854

  • 👍1
ialokim commented

The latest PTE is broken on jitpack.

The PTE repo we use also happens to be maintained by me, I will try to find some time to look into it.

  • 👍1
  • ❤️1
Altonss commented

The PTE repo we use also happens to be maintained by me, I will try to find some time to look into it.

No worries, take your time :) (It's a project in our free time for all of us here)

Echolon commented

I started a general discussion on a vision for the app here

Deleted user commented

Hey @Echolon, just wanted to say that I'm interested in supporting your idea. I'm not really a developer nor have any real coding experience, but I'd like to help & learn in whichever way if possible. Is there any way of easy contact like via e-mail, perhaps Discord or something similar?

Thank you as well as the whole team that has been working on this project for years for trying to keep this app alive!

Echolon commented
  • 👍1
  • ❤️1
Deleted user commented

Hello everyone,

I apologize in advance if any part of this post is incomprehensible.
English is not my native language.

Some time ago, I started moving away from closed-source applications (such as Google Maps) to open-source alternatives developed by the community (such as Transportr).

From my several days of searching, Transportr is the only app that declares to support my region (Poland) and is likely to be updated (other apps haven't received any commits for several years)

I have no experience in programming android apps (I only know the basics of Java), but I would like to help develop this app as much as I can.

I would like to further ask if you are perhaps planning to change the design of the app in the near future? I want all the apps I have to have Material Design 3 (which looks AMAZING) and support for Material You color synchronization.

Echolon commented

Hello everyone,

I apologize in advance if any part of this post is incomprehensible. English is not my native language.

Some time ago, I started moving away from closed-source applications (such as Google Maps) to open-source alternatives developed by the community (such as Transportr).

From my several days of searching, Transportr is the only app that declares to support my region (Poland) and is likely to be updated (other apps haven't received any commits for several years)

I have no experience in programming android apps (I only know the basics of Java), but I would like to help develop this app as much as I can.

I would like to further ask if you are perhaps planning to change the design of the app in the near future? I want all the apps I have to have Material Design 3 (which looks AMAZING) and support for Material You color synchronization.

Hey,

great to hear! I recommend you check if you ideas or suggestions exist already, otherwise you can describe it in new issues.

Other then that you you can of course spread the word or donate to the developers and volunteers of course.

Maybe join also the vision discussion.

atollk commented

Hey. There seems to be no official conclusion in this issue thread and the commit history has been slow in recent times. I see that some PRs have been reviewed but does that mean there is still no active maintainer?

Altonss commented

Hey. There seems to be no official conclusion in this issue thread and the commit history has been slow in recent times. I see that some PRs have been reviewed but does that mean there is still no active maintainer?

I have tried to be around, help open PRs and fix issues. I could merge my own PRs, but honestly would prefer other reviewers to have a look, including more experienced Transportr maintainers. Sadly previous maintainers don't seem to be around much anymore, which is totally understandable no issue about that :)

Altonss commented

A very big milestone would be the support for worlwide routing with transitous.org, see #954 !
This would simplify a lot the maintenance, and increase a lot the usability of Transportr!

atollk commented

I have some experience in developing web apps, including Kotlin, and wanted to give Android app development a try, to a yet uncertain degree. But I have had bad experiences with contributing to open source projects that have been abandoned by their maintainer, as they always died at some point and my work went to waste. Especially since even beyond the Github repo ownership, there seem to be other points of contact such as the donations and JawgMaps.

Altonss commented

To bring Transportr forward, and make the UI look better and more modern (and also fix readability bugs), I made some UI changes in #948.
If someone is willing to try it out and review the changes it would be great :) I don't feel comfortable merging a big UI change without feedback :) Thanks in advance!