Graphql-flutter: How should we maintain this project? 🚀

[arsen]

I'm just curious if this project is still going to be supported and maintained?
Based on commit logs since a month ago almost no commits are made.

This is a really awesome project it will be sad to see this go.

[micimize]

It is maintained as time allows by a handful of contributors, most actively me and @mainawycliffe, but none of us have the incentives to work on it full time (no monetized app in production, no patreon money, etc). A month isn't really that long for a project nobody is being paid to work on.

I do have an app in development that depends on this project, which is the reason I started contributing, personally, but I haven't had much time to work on it (or graphql-flutter) due to work-work.

I also have a liberapay, which if it really took off I'd put a lot more time in here, but I don't expect that to happen, especially since I don't push it at all anyhow.

[micimize]

@HofmannZ has previously mentioned that he and @eusdima no longer have the time to contribute significantly (They were developing https://www.zinoapp.com/, which I believe this was originally a dependency for).

Pinned to hopefully make things more transparent.

[serendipity1004]

@micimize @mainawycliffe I would love to contribute to this package; however, as I have a full time job like everyone else, I could not find time to look over the entire package. If you guys could spend a bit of time briefly explaining how things are organized. I promise to regularly contribute. It would be excellent if we could source some apollo team to contribute to this package but as they have no plan to do so. This package is the only hope in using graphql on flutter so I believe if we could get some directions for diving into the code, collaborators will increase fast.

[HofmannZ]

@serendipity1004 You are more than welcome to contribute!

At the moment, we're exploring a way to fund this open-source project 🚀. We created an OpenCollective, so we can hopefully cover (some) engineering costs. We're still looking into how we can split the funds fairly. We'd probably need a way to track time/issues/PRs/etc. All suggestions are welcome!

@micimize @truongsinh @mainawycliffe tagging you in here, just to pick your thoughts ;)

[micimize]

I personally think that our current status is fine, all things considered.

If someone monetizes an app built with graphql-flutter (or is trying to) they can step up and support/contribute to their key dependency. That's why I started contributing. I just think we should be transparent about that potential necessity

Until then, we're doing what we can, but everyone's got their own priorities. Open collective money would be nice, but could introduce more complexity in governance than it's worth. I'm pretty skeptical of OS crowdfunding in general though.

@serendipity1004 I'll try and find some time to add docs etc.

[truongsinh]

Also, it depends on what the needs of what to be maintained/developed.

[serendipity1004]

how do you guys usually debug plugins? print functions don't seem to work on exteneral packages

[Sewdn]

I'm willing to contribute to this awesome project, as soon as time frees up.

Things I will be working on (in this order):

1. PR on existing CacheProvider to avoid inconsistent/incomplete cache (cfr #423 )
2. moving GraphQLClient to Isolate(s). This issue seems critical when trying to persist cache more often and avoid cache loss when app is closed. (cfr #424 )
3. using Moor as an alternative (normalized/optimistic) CacheLayer, removing overhead of encoding cache to json and providing in cache persistence and restoration. (cfr #402 )

[HofmannZ]

@micimize Alright, let's see where this goes.

I'll do my best to, at least, put in some PR reviews. And hopefully, I'll find some more time to write PRs, since this is a project I enjoy.

@Sewdn Awesome to have you onboard!

[shafqatevo]

We're planning to use this package in another open source framework. We're in the early stages of designing the framework. We hope to get involved in addressing the high priority issues here.

@HofmannZ regarding exploring "We're still looking into how we can split the funds fairly. We'd probably need a way to track time/issues/PRs/etc. All suggestions are welcome!" - is there any current best practice around this? Any successful open source project that does this?

[ronyitc]

@shafqatevo, @HofmannZ I found this https://allcontributors.org/. This helps recognising contributors. It is using by many open source projects and looks solid. Here is the github repo https://github.com/all-contributors/all-contributors

[shafqatevo]

@ronyitc unless I am missing something - I was referring to how to fairly split money raised through crowdfunding of open source projects among its contributors. Not something like All Contributors.

[micimize]

@shafqatevo glancing at a few open collective projects like material-ui and babel, it seems the usual approach is to just settle on some rate for core contributors/maintainers. I think that's a good model - I would personally prefer we had a single funded full or part time contributor than get paid anything.

To me, if anyone wants to take ownership, and put in the upfront time investment and entrepreneurial effort required to make the project "profitable", they should reap the rewards of that effort.

@shafqatevo you should join the discord and tell us more about your framework

[SanjiKir]

Hey guys, how it looks like? Do you have any update on the future of this package, are you looking for contributors or something? Because I don't see many commits lately and I am building a project based on graphql, so just wondering how reliable is to use this package :)

[micimize]

@SanjiKir Right now I'm focusing on built_value-based code generation and it's "example" app, but a round of graphql_flutter contributions/maintenance is on my near-term personal roadmap.

I'm currently making a concerted effort to do more open source work/livecoding, with this being one of the projects I'd like to contribute more to. As I've mentioned in the discord, if this experiment gains enough momentum I may be able to step up as more of a core maintainer.

I'd also encourage anyone for whom graphql_flutter is a key dependency to contribute to the open collective. The reality of software is someone is always paying for development/maintenance, in some way or another.

[SanjiKir]

@micimize I've joined to the list of bakers, I know it's not much, probably will start donating more once there will be some movement here :) Hopefully, there will be more people joining open collective supporters, looking forwards to new updates and code reviews in this package! Cheers!

[micimize]

I'm taking responsibility for v4 and maintenance for now. If it goes well, I'll continue on as core maintainer indefinitely, thus solving this ongoing problem

From #608 :

I've decided to move working on graphql_flutter to the top of my priority queue, particularly working on v4.

To support development please sponsor me or the graphql-flutter open collective if you can.