[Devel] Android app for working with OpenHatch

[Asheesh Laroia]

On Mon, 23 May 2011, Mark Freeman wrote:

> Good morning everyone.  I wanted to see what you all think about 
> something.  My day job is as a Java developer.  One of the few perks is 
> that I get to do some Android development for our Enterprise 
> application, letting users view data through a REST service.  I'm VERY 
> interested in working on an Android app that would allow people to 
> interact with OH through their mobile device.  My thoughts were that it 
> would mimic much of the functionality of the site, viewing suggested 
> bugs, the I want to help button, viewing the profile, etc. 
> Hypothetically, the server side stuff should be just a view pushing out 
> data returned from methods that already exist.
>
> I could totally use the practice on Android and I really think it would 
> be a cool feature.  I have a thick skin if everyone thinks this bad 
> idea. Thoughts?

Hi Mark! I guess here are my thoughts.

Generally, I don't really think this would be all that useful. When you're 
trying to learn how to get involved in free software, it seems to me that 
you're going to have to use a computer (to do things like learn about 
svn/tar, or to do things like write documentation or patches that are the 
contributions themselves).

If you're interested in making your original plan happen, then by all 
means go ahead! It will require some extra (trivial) views on the main 
site's end, in terms of exposing more data. To the extent that you'd be 
willing to actually build that API by submitting patches in that regard, 
that'd be totally exciting from my perspective. Even just specifying what 
you need and getting someone else excited about making it would be make me 
happy. (-:

It might be possible that there's some middle-ground of content that's 
particularly useful for people on phones but that escapes me at the 
moment. Actually, putting our future-theoretical-web-forum thing or 
videos about what it's like to contribute to various projects; that 
might be really interesting.

So my feeling is "I'm glad you're enthusiastic about it! But I'm not 
really". I don't meant to be too much of a downer.

-- 
-- Asheesh.

http://asheesh.org/

Of course you have a purpose -- to find a purpose.