NLnet milestone 3b: app store for Unhosted apps

[michielbdejong]

3b. create an app store for Unhosted apps (1.250 euro)

https://storage.5apps.com/michiel/public/shares/131122-1639-2013-08-019-mou-unhosted.pdf

[michielbdejong]

will start this tomorrow

[raucao]

How does this make more sense than either submit directly to the FF marketplace, or use their codebase? Developing a store that people actually use takes months of work with a whole team.

Not that I want to keep you from doing this, but If I were you I'd really think about this, and maybe talk with people who already built their own stores and didn't launch them yet for good reasons. wink, wink

[raucao]

Maybe "store" is the wrong word, and a simple catalog without submission features etc is what you had in mind? Would certainly make more sense to me.

[michielbdejong]

The description in the MoU is:

End users do not want to scourge code repositories like github. We want to make it easy for end
users to start using unhosted apps, an so we aim to create a 'store' for web apps where people
can find out which applications have been deployed on 5apps. We will encourage authors of
unhosted web apps to make their apps available there as well as in other ways that end users can
easily find them.

The current state of what we offer for this is https://unhosted.org/apps/ and (unpublished wip) https://unhosted.org/launcher.html

Since we only have about 30 apps, it would make sense to me to make this a 'reverse' store, where all apps are installed by default, and you 'uninstall' (remove) the ones you don't like. Instead of 'installing' the ones you like from the store to your home screen. That way you can customize the launcher with a simple 'delete' button for each app.

People can submit their apps with a pull request, just like it is now for adding apps to unhosted.org/apps/ - which reminds me, you should add webmarks and sharesome there! :)

I agree that this store will not replace FF marketplace, nor compete with it. It's mainly an evolution of the "list of example apps" which we already have.

I'll also see which apps I can find buildable source for (and update to rs.js 0.10). I'll probably create a Docker image to automate that (just record the build steps from the command line into a Dockerfile), so that when 0.10.1 comes out, we have an automated build for instantly updating 20 or 30 apps out there. and then it would also be easy enough to push updated branches, to easily create pull requests.

[raucao]

Ok, makes sense. Except for the Docker part I think. Everybody uses their own build toolchains, frameworks, etc. – let's not waste time on trying to force people to do things a certain way, just for one of the libraries in their app.

[raucao]

By the way: I have an older repo for an app dashboard lying around. The idea was to have an apps module that holds information about your app collection. This is different than app installation, which you'd do an any device, where you want to. For Open Web Apps, we can even show if the app is already installed on your device on that dashboard (which would act as both a dashboard and personal app catalog then).

[michielbdejong]

Assuming it's open source, you can add the dashboard app (as well as your other apps) to https://unhosted.org/apps/ and the module to https://github.com/remotestorage/modules

The Dockerfile is just for me to automate the toolchain I need for building everybody's apps. I'll send pull requests just for the rs.js version updates

[michielbdejong]

Done, see http://apps.unhosted.org/