And that answer to both is it’s pretty much down to funding. I’d say my summation from my last post on Field Kit Status Update, which was only a little over a year ago:
I don’t know that the estimate is even too far off. There have been plenty of changes, but I was already anticipating the upgrade from farmOS v2 to v3, and if memory serves, @mstenta was saying there aren’t too many big shifts with this latest bump to v4. I posted a poll to meet and discuss if anyone was interested in finding ways to fund it collectively, but didn’t get any takers. And nothing since then.
With time to reflect, I acknowledge now that there were some distinct disadvantages to Field Kit’s architecture – namely, serving it from a separate host, rather than embedding it in farmOS itself. That’s actually what Asset Link does last I checked. Now, that’s another one to consider. It’s is a great alternative, though I can’t say off the top of my head the specific points it deviates from Field Kit’s features (I’m pretty sure it supports offline, is that right @Symbioquine?).
If it ever gets revived, I’d probably look into adopting the “embedded” approach, as a fully fledged farmOS module itself, or something similar. I’d at least try to set it up to run from a subdomain that can still get bundled w/ farmOS somehow and pegged to its version/configuration/modules/etc. It’d be a toss-up whether that would help or hurt more in the initial upgrade, but I think it would certainly go a long ways towards reducing the maintenance costs, essentially by piggy-backing off farmOS’s maintenance.
I’ve also been cogitating on a totally new approach and putting that new engine into a totally revamped version of Field Kit that could run in browser and/or maybe try to build it on Tauri for native desktops and Android. Definitely file that under pipe dreams for now, but I’m very keen to start work on that project more generally (with or w/o Field Kit) any-which-way I can, hopefully in the near future.
IMHO, the separate farmos.app domain strategy (like Field Kit does) could have big potential advantages from a “check into multiple farms” or “take your data with you” perspectives.
On the other hand, the strategy that Asset Link uses - where it is a module embedded-in/hosted-on farmOS - provides the advantage that it can be versioned along with farmOS and you automatically get distinct instances for each farmOS instance (as a function of browser’s built-in site/domain level isolation).
Yes, Asset Link also strives to provide an offline app-like interface for farmOS.
I don’t want to distract too much from this thread with full compare/contrast sort of details - though I’m happy to answer questions either here or in a new thread as is appropriate.
I will give two points that I think are pertinent to this thread though:
Though Asset Link development is going pretty slowly at the moment, I am using the current version very heavily in my own endeavors so I expect to continue maintaining it for the foreseeable future.
