POC for cross-platform app development: mobile + desktop

[jbonisteel]

The of this issue goal is to do a proof-of-concept to understand how we might be able to do cross-platform app development. This will help us make a decision about what solution might be right for us. We want to understand if cross-platform development is possible and what the pain points might be.

The output of this issue should be:

• Code repo that has an implementation of this POC that we described.
• We can build with instructions in readme for android, ios, desktop
• It doesn’t have to be pretty or well-written but it needs to run. The less code the better. This Helps us inspect the repo and find areas where there may be issues.

Notes about what we want the POC to do:

• Basic support for starting a test using probe-engine (single test is enough)
• Supporting automatic background runs
• Some sort of way of speaking to a DB + query to show measurements (list, filter, sort measurements)
  • DB migrations: are there nice frameworks that allow DB migrations nicely, or delete measurements and start fresh.
• If we can somehow integrate react-based explorer views (web view? Or some other way?)
• What is the effort to implement a MAT in the mobile and desktop apps and what would it 'cost' to implement a measurement page?
• How do we get stuff about network capabilities of the device? (is there a vpn, info about mobile network, whether they are on wifi, etc)
• Auto-update on desktop is important. How do we transition automates to new framework/system. Is there a clean way to do this or we have to tell people to re-install?
• Settings handling - how does that work?
• How mobile deep linking
• Platform specific logic, is there a nice way to make app behave slightly differently per platform if need be
• In general - what is the developer experience like? Try making some builds, what is that like
• Integrating translations (localization strings) - can we import it in one format and use across all? What happens if strings might be slightly different per platform?
• Countly, how do we add countly? In general, push notifications. Is there something even better then countly?

[jbonisteel]

Per conversation from Slack, ideally we should do the following before closing this issue:

• Deep linking.
• Determine network state of device.
• Automatic tests hourly.
• Settings mapped to the new structure.
• Sample flavor for NMS and Probe.

[jbonisteel]

Deep linking is something we still need to sort out but it should work

[jbonisteel]

Still need to test out database migration