Popcorn-desktop: [Discussion] Optimize the Stack

[rafaell-lycan]

Hi PopcornTime team, how are you guys doing?

I'd like to ask if there are any plans regarding update the stack as Butter does.

• From Gulp to Webpack?
• From Node-Webkit to Electron?
• From Backbone+Marionette to React? _(oh boy, this might take ages...)_

I'd say that the community can help you guys with a proper roadmap. I mean, probably just a few of you'll actually know the whole app specs and I'm not 100% sure if the current stack is easy to maintain.

Let us know if we can help improve it.

Cheers.

[team-pct]

We would be happy to see the migration from Backbone to React but i guess it gonna take ages as you said any help is welcome

Work was started here https://github.com/butterproject/butter-desktop/tree/devel/src but never get to see the light

[rafaell-lycan]

I see, but no plans to continue on it? What's the simplest path to go for an MVP/Beta version?

Take a look at this initiative for instance, I'd say that's a great start to help guys on it and then the community can start following a beta version of PCT and not only test but also contribute and evolve with it.

Cheers.

[ranisalt]

What about alternatives? I see Butter uses the ones you mentioned but there's rollup and parcel instead of webpack, I would rather use a lighter version such as neutralino, ultralight and not have yet another Electron app taking hundreds of megabytes, and there's Vue and Svelte. I think Flutter for desktop apps is in beta and could be also a good option, but that one I don't know.

[rafaell-lycan]

@ranisalt the only issue I see with neutralino is that it still new and the community behind is quite small yet. I'd prefer to use something that will generate a bigger bundle but I'll know that it will evolve fast and be sure that is going to be maintained for a long period over-relying on something unsure.

I'm an early adopter myself and for a proof of concept could be nice to give a try, but again it's still growing and lack o documentation for now compared with NW.js and Electron.

Totally agree with using something like Rollup/Vue instead though, but unsure about Svelte for the same reason of avoiding neutralino. 👍

I rather use React overall 'cuz it would be easier to have more people collaborating _(as FOSS sometimes have lack of maintainers)_ and also because it's very community-driven and also active AF. IMO even RN _(Expo maybe?)_ + Electron would be a great choice, but no hard feelings on it, Vue + whatever sound nice to me as well.

[TriPSs]

@rafaell-lycan Based on the fork you mentioned i created a fully working one with React here, it also has a react native version here.

If you really want to build a react version and don't want to redo everything you could start there, I do note that it are older projects with a lot of outdated deps etc.

[rafaell-lycan]

@TriPSs quite like it, although both need tons of love (not only outdated dependencies, but also lots of things that probably not needed, like Flow and a bunch of Babel loaders for instance).

Is it something that you're looking forward to continue or not?

[TriPSs]

@rafaell-lycan The react native version became part of something new (PCT env running on local network), I do want to continue on that.

Regarding the desktop app, I have no intensions in continuing it as like you said it's bloated; It would likely be faster to redo it and use the popcorn-sdk which does the searching / API intergration for the most part.