Future development roadmap and contributions

[imclearlythebest]

With the recent modernization work (API 34 support, AndroidX migration, security improvements, etc.), it feels like the project has gained momentum after a long period of inactivity.

It might be a good time to have a dedicated discussion about how development should move forward from here.

Some things that could be helpful to discuss:

• What level of involvement @fandreuz is expecting to have going forward
• Whether there’s openness to adding maintainers to help with ongoing development and reviews
• Whether there are any immediate priorities (e.g., documentation updates, reviewing existing issues) that would help stabilize things before new features are added

It would also be helpful to better understand current contribution expectations. Particularly how contributors should approach new features, fixes, and larger changes. Especially since the contributing section in the README seems to have been removed in the latest commit.

[TheTearMiser]

I am here for this conversation for sure. I'm in love with this app and I have a "working" Termux solution but its messy, and it needs help. I'd be happy to continue working on it if this project would like the contributions.

[imclearlythebest]

I am here for this conversation for sure. I'm in love with this app and I have a "working" Termux solution but its messy, and it needs help. I'd be happy to continue working on it if this project would like the contributions.

I went through past issues. This has been requested before. In fact, it's one of the earliest requests (#26). Moreover, the dev had an interest in a proper integration but since the Termux dev wasn't interested, nothing came of it. The pass-through approach had been suggested later in #259, but the dev never replied.

I think there is enough interest in it (and it's a very natural extension to the way people like using T-UI) for you to continue your work. However, I think you should send the dev an email before you commit too much time on it since the dev had suggested doing that.

Pull requests are welcome. But before you decide to make a major change you should contact me (e-mail) in order to check if I'm going to include your change in t-ui, so you don't waste your time.

[imclearlythebest]

I’ve been going through the repo (slowly, exams week 😅) to get a sense of the current state of T-UI, and I noticed a few things around ecosystem and community that might be worth discussing.

It seems like several of the original platforms are no longer active:

• The theme website appears to be down (Themes site is dead #324), even though it was central for sharing and browsing themes
• The Telegram link in the README doesn’t seem to work (might be outdated?)
• Older discussions were redirected to Google Communities, which is now shut down
• Reddit also seems inactive in recent years

This makes it a bit unclear where users should go for sharing themes or discussing the project.

One idea might be to establish a new central community space (e.g., Discord or similar), but I’m curious what others think would make the most sense here.

On the theme side specifically: since the website repo still exists, it might be possible to bring it back in some form. However, it looks like the theme website URL is currently hardcoded in the app:

TUI-ConsoleLauncher/app/src/main/java/ohi/andre/consolelauncher/managers/ThemeManager.java

Line 89 in 46569e5

String url = "https://tui.tarunshankerpandey.com/show_data.php?data_type=xml&theme_id=" + themeName;

That means changing it would require an app update. Maybe this could be reworked to allow a configurable URL, so that multiple community-run theme portals could exist?

Curious to hear what others think, especially regarding:

• where the community should live going forward
• how theme sharing should be handled long-term

If there’s interest in reviving the theme portal, I’ve been working with ASP.NET recently and would be happy to try putting together a version that’s easier to deploy and run by the community (potentially with integrations like Discord-based submissions).

That said, it probably makes sense to first align on how theme sharing should work long-term before committing to a specific approach.

[imclearlythebest]

While going through the codebase, I noticed that the repository license has been updated to MIT, but some individual files still include Apache 2.0 license headers.

I’m not very experienced with license management, but I’m wondering what the intended approach is here:

• Should those file headers be updated for consistency?
• Or are they meant to remain as-is to reflect their original licensing?

Happy to help clean things up if needed, but it would be good to clarify the correct approach first.

[imclearlythebest]

I noticed another thing. One of the files refers to this repository as being a fork of itself. It's probably leftover from a PR. It should be quick and easy to fix, but I'll check other files as well so I can submit a single PR to address these inconsistencies.