Isar is dead, long live Isar

[JakobLichterfeld]

Current State

Obviously, Isar is abandoned by @simc

Obviously, Isar remains an exceptional piece of software

Long live Isar

@Jtplouffe, as far as I can tell, you still have write access to the repository. Could we join forces with @vicenterusso and others who showed their interest through recent PRs to ensure Isar’s longevity and continued development?

Why I refrain from using the Community Fork

There is a Community Fork. led by @vicenterusso.
However, after reviewing it, I noticed some concerns (I may be wrong on some points):

• Pull requests being merged despite failed CI checks, indicating potential quality issues.
• A divergence in overall project standards and quality.
• Commit messages not adhering to conventional specifications.

Some relevant Issues and PRs

Issues: #1686, #1685, #1679, #1678, #1675, #1673, #1672, #1655, #1652, #1647, #1640, #1625, #1601, #1564, #1560, …
PRs: #1688, #1659, #1599, #1569, …

[vicenterusso]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I understand your concerns, and I’ll address them briefly:

• CI Checks and Quality: You’re right.. ensuring high standards is critical. I’m working on improving this for the Community Fork.

• Project Standards: I agree there's room for better consistency, and we should focus on setting clearer guidelines.

My goal is simple: to keep Isar alive because it’ a very good project. I’ve even got an early proof of concept for Isar v4 with persistence on the web, but it’s still in its infancy and needs work.

This can’t be a solo effort. Also, we all have limited time and other priorirties. I’d appreciate input and help from you, @Jtplouffe, @mrclauss and others interested in Isar’s future.

[JakobLichterfeld]

Thanks for elaborating on the points. My concern is about the code coverage dropping from 72% to 32% (when looking at the badges), but when looking deeper it seems like a misinformation, as https://app.codecov.io/gh/isar/isar shows 32.41% and https://app.codecov.io/gh/isar-community/isar shows 89.63%.

[mrclauss]

I fully agree with Vicente, and in my opinion there are two major points that need to be resolved before looking at technical issues:

• Gaining access to the original repo/pub.dev package, since otherwise there's either the extra effort for hosting the package elsewhere or renaming everything to a different package name. Both options are pretty uncomfortable for both, people bringing isar forward and user utilising isar. Simon promised to grant us the required rights some time ago, but that did not actually happen unfortunately.
• It can't and should not be a solo effort, as Vicente pointed out. The time we all have available is one aspect of this, but the problems that come up when this solo person vanishes is the other, as we see with Simon being unavailable. So even though lot's of topics are fixed, nobody's able to publish a new release to pub.dev. That should not happen in again the future...

That's my two cents so far. To be fair, I did not closely follow what happened in the last months since I switched from isar to drift, but I would also like to see isar staying alive...

[JakobLichterfeld]

^reported

Edit: The user got removed by GitHub as reaction to my report.

[Mihai-B]

The only thing I don't understand is, Simon's github page does seem to show some activity. So he is contributing to private repos I guess, can't we just reach him somehow in order to give us access to the pub.dev repo?

[mohamadlounnas]

The only thing I don't understand is, Simon's github page does seem to show some activity. So he is contributing to private repos I guess, can't we just reach him somehow in order to give us access to the pub.dev repo?

this is weird! no one could contact him? or no one really tried?

[JakobLichterfeld]

no one could contact him? or no one really tried?

They tried:

• Simon promised to grant us the required rights some time ago, but that did not actually happen unfortunately.

[vicenterusso]

The only thing I don't understand is, Simon's github page does seem to show some activity. So he is contributing to private repos I guess, can't we just reach him somehow in order to give us access to the pub.dev repo?

He is probably very busy with other priorities and I dare say that he is no longer that close to the flutter ecosystem

[mohamadlounnas]

no one could contact him? or no one really tried?

They tried:

• Simon promised to grant us the required rights some time ago, but that did not actually happen unfortunately.

what about the community fork?

[vicenterusso]

no one could contact him? or no one really tried?

They tried:

• Simon promised to grant us the required rights some time ago, but that did not actually happen unfortunately.

what about the community fork?

I'm also very busy lately but I will surely rename isar to isar_community and publish it to pub.dev eventually

[samithe7]

Simon Choi's back 👍 join us on telegram

[Sadmansamee]

this is frustrating, I should have learned my lesson from his another library's fate. We have 1M user in our app and we used ISAR, now having a unmaintained library is a very serious issue for many of us here.

[vicenterusso]

this is frustrating, I should have learned my lesson from his another library's fate. We have 1M user in our app and we used ISAR, now having a unmaintained library is a very serious issue for many of us here.

You should not feel that way. Simon works for a company that uses Isar heavily, serving millions of users as well. V3 is very rock solid, and almost all issues can be worked around. I myself have developed an app that depends on Isar, and it has proven to be very solid too.

[Sadmansamee]

this is frustrating, I should have learned my lesson from his another library's fate. We have 1M user in our app and we used ISAR, now having a unmaintained library is a very serious issue for many of us here.

You should not feel that way. Simon works for a company that uses Isar heavily, serving millions of users as well. V3 is very rock solid, and almost all issues can be worked around. I myself have developed an app that depends on Isar, and it has proven to be very solid too.

Thanks for assurance

[hitblast]

Hello! I'm currently developing a macOS-only application which uses Isar under the hood as the database. Should I keep on using v3 from the core repository or move on to isar_community?