Author: Konrad Dębiec

GSoC 2019 is coming to an end and for this reason it is unfortunately my last blog post on freifunk. For this reason, I would like to start by thanking the freifunk community, Google and, in particular, my mentors for the opportunity to participate in this rather special program. In this post I will present what has been done, what has not worked out and what is still to be done.

Code and APK

You can find the application code at my github repository:
https://github.com/kdebiec/GSoC_2019
And the application itself, ready to use here:
https://github.com/kdebiec/GSoC_2019/releases/tag/GSoC_2019_final
(Please note that you need the “Retroshare Service/Core” application in order for the application to work properly. – backend application that you can build from the Retroshare repository: https://github.com/RetroShare/RetroShare)

Overview

The aim of my project as I mentioned in my first post is to build a mobile application oriented around the chat, with a big focus on the modern look. The new logo, which is also part of this project, was intended to reflect new direction of this software.

Logo

Below you can see the new Retroshare logo, which is the main logo for this application, and in other projects its use will depend on the acceptance by users and the profile of the project.

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App

I have posted my proposed design in this post. Now it’s time to show off final design, but it is difficult to describe the appearance of the application and it makes little sense to paste several screens here. Because of this I recorded a walkthrough of the application. You can check it out here:

Illustrations of empty screens are provided by Icons8. Thanks for them!

Application was fully written in Dart using Flutter. This should ensure relative code readability, an optional ability to port the code to iOS, and relatively fast application performance.

Features

Functionalities that are now available in the application:

• add friend via certificate and share ours,
• create with avatar, change and delete our identities,
• see friends locations,
• create public room (lobby),
• send and receive message,
• add and remove contact
• search for chats, contacts, people,
• discover public rooms,
• see rooms participants,
• signin, signup;

Roadmap

There are still many interesting things to do in this project and for this reason I intend to continue my work. In particular, I would like to focus on these features:

• Make a good use of and improve Retroshare’s Json api event system. This will enable app to have message notifications and optimize its performance.
• Bundle backend and frontend into one app. Current system is confusing and leaves much to be desired. Who wants to manage the process themselves that is still in the background anyway?
• Explore possibility to add tor option as it is in Retroshare desktop app.
• Improve chat backend, especially much needed storage of history.
• After merging Retroshare’s short certs, add QR code as a default way to add friends. This will involve redesigning the way it works now.
• At this point, user still have to be aware of how Retroshare works under the hood. Future improvements have to be made so user will have to only operate with identities. For example, now, after adding friend we have to yet find his identity in search box to add him to contact and finally after those steps we can message him.
• The website is already a bit outdated and it could use a new look. As soon as the application is ready, I would like to refresh website.
• As you can see on video, rooms name are also ‘Error’, which of course is not the name of room. Due to lack of native support of 64int in Dart, lobbies ids can’t be loaded and so does names. Thanks to my mentor, Gio, solution is already in PR, and after merge, some minor changes have yet to be done on frontend side.

Conclusion

During this program I tried to build a very good application base that can be further developed, which I hope will make futher improvements easy. Unfortunately, during this period I was not able to meet all the milestones, specifically, the chat backend has not been improved. In spite of everything, I intend, according to my Roadmap, to improve the chat backend as well as add more functions to the app so that it can be considered as a production version.

I encourage everyone, especially current Retroshare users, to test the new app. I hope you like it.

Once again, I would like to thank my mentors for their help in recent months.

It’s been a month since the last post, so it’s time to summarize this period. In the previous post I showed the beginnings of my adventure with implementing the designed look of the application. That version looked as I intended, but it lacked interactivity, data management and connection to the main retroshare-service application.

The current version of the application has added animations for transitions between screens or tabs. Example animations (due to limited upload size, video is badly compressed 🙁 ):

Also, screens have been added to help various side activities such as creating a new identity or to make it easier to create an account, if it doesn’t already exist.:

And the next thing I spent some time on was the correct handling of queries for retroshare-service and data processing. Thanks to that, in the application we can already perform basic activities such as logging in or managing our identities.

In addition to the activities presented here, I devoted some time to just building a retroshare-service application, which exceeded my expectations about the ease of this task.

Next steps

In the application there are still a few minor modifications to be done. One of the key changes is to ensure proper storage and generation of the authorization token. Nevertheless, the main task of the upcoming period will be to add new functionalities and minor fixes to the Retroshare itself.

Due to the fact that visually the application is already very close to the final product, I would be happy to hear some criticism and hints what needs to be changed.

Cheers,
Konrad Dębiec

It’s been a while since my last post. For a reminder, my job is to create a functional Retroshare application for Android. As in May, also in this period of time I focused on the visual aspect of the application, but this time from the technical side.

It started with choosing the technology in which the application was to be written. Selected framework should provide an easy way to combine the frontend with libretroshare, have an active development community and be cross-platform so that in the future it can be used to easily transfer application to iOS as well. One the basis of these criteria, Flutter was chosen.

So far main screens has been implemented and can be seen below:

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There is still a lot of work to be done on the visual side and I will be working on it in the near future. In addition, I will explore the addition of asynchronous messaging and storage of message history to libretroshare.

Introduction

Retroshare, a decentralized social networking platform, is available only from desktops, so its use is limited to a narrow audience. In the past, an attempt was made to create a mobile application, but the project was abandoned. The aim of this GSoC project is to create a Retroshare mobile client from scratch with an emphasis on the chat feature. In order to make it a fully functional communicator, the Retroshare library will be extended as well.

About Me

My name is Konrad, I am first year undergraduate student in Computer Science at AGH University of Science and Technology in Cracow, Poland. In the past I have been experimenting with creating modern desktop client for Retroshare. This is my first time as a GSoC participant.

Project Overview

This project have 4 major milestones:

1. Logo redesing
2. UI/UX design of mobile app
3. Implementation of frontend design
4. Redesign and implementation of chat backend in libretroshare

The planned result of my work should be a user-friendly communicator with the following functions:

a)     Core functionality:
o   Creating new account
o   Importing existing accounts from other devices
o   Creating new identity
o   Sending plain text in group chat and chat between GXS identities
o   Adding/Removing GXS identities to/from your list of friends  
b)     Feature enhancement:
o   Adding profile picture
o   Changing status (Active, Inactive)
o   Switching between identities
o   Sending in chat: emojis,  files and pictures

To achieve this, as part of my work will be the enhancement of the libretroshare chat to include asynchronous message sending and storage of message history.

Community Bonding Period

This period of time I used to explore the idea of a new logo and UI application. The proposal for a new logo retains the current spirit, but with a clear emphasis on modernity.

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The purpose of the application is simple, to give the possibility of secure non-centralized communication to people, therefore the proposed design is minimalistic and focuses only on the basic functionality. The proposed design can be viewed at the following address: https://vimeo.com/338567162

Best of luck to fellow GSoC students,
Konrad Dębiec