[PLEASE VOTE] so what should we be working on

[Miika Turkia]

On Sun, May 29, 2016 at 12:37 AM, Dirk Hohndel <dirk at hohndel.org> wrote:
> I have been focused on other things for a while (and the why and the what will become public fairly soon) and decided to use that chance to figure out what would happen if I just stopped paying attention here for a while.
>
> Here's what I think I learned (correct me if I'm wrong)
>
> a) no one cares about Subsurface-mobile. No bug reports, no code, no suggestions, nothing. So I guess we should call this a failed attempt and abandon it - screw the 500 or so people who use it.

I think the Subsurface-mobile is cool. It is nice and handy to show
around spontaneously. And to check a detail when full log is
accessible.

One thing I have been considering is, should we add a cancel to the
"menu", if one is too slow to cancel an accidental deletion of a dive.

> b) Miika continues to deal with any import bug that shows up. Awesome. Your patches have been pushed
>
> c) there continues to be a slow crawl of features, ideas, patches for the planner. Those have also been pushed (someone poke me if I got something wrong there)
>
> d) no one cares about the dive site mess that we have. The current version in Subsurface 4.5.x is pretty much unusable and makes no bleeping sense.  No patches, some suggestions for improvement, no discussion, nothing.
>
>
> In summary, this project is pretty much dead. I guess it does everything the formerly active developers wanted? Or everyone has moved on to more fun things? Or had children, changed jobs, built a house, lost their job, or one of a number of other life events?

Things tend to move in cycles. Also seeing other people hacking
Subsurface does give a motivation boost to do the same (and vice
versa). On the other hand, I am quite happy with the current feature
set of the desktop application. I like the mobile app and have had
some crashing on iPhone, but don't know if there is any way to get
stack trace or anything out of it to see why. I also like the idea of
c.h.i.p module and would really like to hack on that side as well.

I have booked a test sprint for this summer, but before that it seems
that I am way too busy due to day job to do much development / testing
/ bug fixing.

> So what should we be working on...? Should we...
>
> (1) just shut this down and move on?

No way

> (2) move things to maintenance mode, abandon Subsurface-mobile, fix bugs in Subsurface whenever we find time but otherwise declare victory? It won't be too painful to track libdicecomputer and keep making 4.5.x releases for a while, I guess...
> (3) focus on Subsurface-mobile, release the iOS version, update the Android version and see if there is a single person besides me who is willing to invest time into that?

II would love to see this to come true. Unfortunately I have not been
much help on mobile side. As Robert (IIRC) has mentioned, there has
been more time invested in Subsurface-mobile than it seems.
Unfortunately for me as well it has usually ended up with nothing to
show for.

Anyway, I think the mobile app is rather close and we should try to
push for the release. If there is something a baby could do, I can try
to tackle those things.

> (4) focus on Subsurface 4.6, fix the dive site management and create a list of prioritized features that we want to get in place?

This one really makes sense. Especially the prioritized feature list.

> (5) focus on Subsurface 5.0, write a completely new UI and abandon what we have in 4.5?

I am not a UI person. The interface we currently have works quite well
for me. I am sure Thomas can do his magic and create a new slick and
modern UI that I would love, but here also we are relying too heavily
on single person. I am not saying no, if we have people who really
want to do this, but new UI is definetely not high on my priorities.

> If your vote is for 3, 4, or 5 I assume that you are volunteering to carry some of the work that is needed to get there.
> If you don't vote, I will count that as a vote for 1.

I think my vote is to first get Subsurface-mobile out and then focus on 4.6.

miika