Present & Future of this AWESOME project

[jramosr95]

Hi!

I just discovered this awesome project and I find really interesting. I will use iCare as a case study for a university project to show how technology can create social movements aimed to care about the environment.

Having said that, I have reviewed the docs and the changelog, and I see there are really interesting features in the To Do list, but it hasn't been updated in a while. I'm afraid I'm not a developer, but anyway I would like to know what is the current status of development, if there are new features to be launch soon and if I can help somehow to continue developing this awesome project.

Thank you!

[davan690]

I second that. :)

[tagliala]

Hi and thanks everyone!

Sorry for the very late reply, I've answered @jramosr95 privately and I can share what is going on here and provide more details

Both me and my colleague @cesidio are full-time committed on different things at the moment.

The iCare project is active for maintenance. I mean, we are testing new libraries on iCare before implementing those changes in our commercial product Company Carpool to ensure that things will not break.

We have plans for iCare, such as an API and native mobile applications, but we don't have resources to develop those features.

Move to a relational database

We would like to use Postgres instead of MongoDB as a database, and we have a partial-working branch available at https://github.com/diowa/icare/tree/feature/postgres. Geographic queries work, but we need to reimplement references and messages.

Rails 6

The application works with Rails 6, but Mongoid is still not compatible and we cannot upgrade.

Front-End

As soon as we upgrade to Rails 6, I would like to switch to webpacker for javascript and css assets just immediately to stay at peace with modern rails application development. We will definitely drop IE8/IE9 support and upgrade to Bootstrap 4 (or even 5), but this has low priority at the moment.

Facebook login

About the Facebook login: I have contrasting feelings about that platform. I'm on it, I use it for my friends and family, but at the same time don't like it.

The Facebook login here is just an example of Token-Based authentication you are supposed to replace with your own one, a different third-party OAuth system, or a classic standalone username-password login implemented via Devise. I'm quite positive to say that the Facebook login is going to stay here for a while.

Hope it helps

Feel free to ask more questions or provide feedback, I will keep this open

[kirantpatil]

Also please consider below request.

Provision to add the geocoding and geolocation details to Open street map.

https://harrywood.co.uk/blog/2018/06/05/space4-openstreetmap-talk/

[tagliala]

@kirantpatil thanks for the suggestion

It is not just about map, we use Google to get directions.

If we want to replace Google, we need a reliable (in the time) and free service that provides drive directions api: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/directions/start

[jramosr95]

Hi Geremia, I'm sorry I didn't reply to your email. Truth is I've been following your advances and the project since then but I forgot to send back. Anyhow, I think this project is growing everytime and I think you are on the right path. Good job.
Ps. The idea of this project loved my professors as much as I do, and they ask me to congratulate you on their behalf. Quoting their words: "It's inspiring to see how open source coding can lead to social & environmental movements, and what's best, there can't be political or physical borders for code and apps to be executed."

[tagliala]

Hi @jramosr95 , thanks for you kind words and thank your professor on my behalf.

I've did some changes to have a more modern technology stack, so in comparison to the last months we have:

• Rails 6 instead of Rails 5
• Webpack + ES6 instead of Sprockets + Coffee (sprockets is still here for some legacy stuff)
• Bootstrap 4 instead of Bootstrap 5
• three-shaked Font Awesome SVG instead of CSS
• Migration from MongoDB to Postgres

I'm now focusing on:

• Docker support