this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
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Liftoff!

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A mobile client for Lemmy running on iOS and Android

founded 2 years ago
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Hey The Dev, this is just a one off, random non technical user's ( I know what does and thats it) question thar are you still advancing (developing has such a Heavy Tone in it) your app? I mean, I LOVE it for the heavens, particularily on the user interface, but its kind of lagging behind of abilities of other Lemmy apps.

Also the big concern is general security as time flies by.

So as a very satisfied but also a little concerned user: whats upp? Is the app still in development, even slow burn?

Edit: I'm a wee bit drunk and not an english speaker, okay, I edited some typo's.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I'm most worried about the upcoming breaking changes in 0.19. Unless this app is still under development, it will be dead in a few weeks.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Hey, thanks for this. At least I wont be raging to the void in confusion if things break down. Though I still hope the app keeps going, but we'll see what happens!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank you for the heads-up! Welp, I guess I have to get into android development again after all. Not sure where I should pull the time from.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have now wasted a couple of hours on getting the app at least to build before I can even start making changes. But it won't build and I can't figure out why. Additional problem is, that this is not a "old-school" Android project in Java (or Kotlin). It is a Flutter project and it uses Dart as language which I have never used.

Additionally, there is an automatic build server that I maybe could have used to infer what the problem for me is, but even it fails to build the app. I cannot look into the older successful runs since the logs have been deleted since. Clearly something has changed from the build tools used but I cannot guess what (correctly). This is the outcome of the problem when nobody uses fixed versions but rather defined "newest", which now breaks everything and nobody knows with what versions it worked.

So I tried Flutter 3.16.0 and 3.13.9 which are most likely too new since it complains about missing and wrong stuff. With 3.10.6 tries to build but it somehow stops without any reason given and I cannot find out how to get it to tell me what the F the problem is.

Sorry for my rambling but I hate this shit and maybe this helps someone.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I‘m not a dev and can’t help you, but thank you very much for trying your best.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well, thank you! But I have more bad news. The communication with lemmy instances is handled by code from someone else. And development for that stopped months ago. So one would have to patch the other library somehow too. And that only fixes the login (which should be rather simple in essence). The changes to 2FA are a bit more complicated. Though, that should only break the setup process, not the login with it.

Sadly, fixing that would require someone that has at least a fair bit more experience developing with that language and tools, and more dedication.

Welllll shhhht. I don’t want to switch apps :(

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

IIRC, liftoff was a merged project by two or more developers. That is probably the reason why the code is split up

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Lol what's the link? Baby Bunny jump?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Finally had to leave liftoff today. The lack of updates and primarily the inability to block instances made me move to connect. I really liked liftoff. It was very close to Reddit is fun good.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Reddit Is Fun users may be interested to hear that the dev created an app for Tildes instead of Lemmy. It's pretty good, though be warned that it's not trying to clone RiF.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Now, to figure out how to get an invite to Tildes...

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Looks like it's dead, no commits after August. You might need to switch to another app soon, thunder and jerboa are some good looking apps.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Someone was asking the same question here and they were told that 3 months of halt don't mean the project is dead, at least 6 months have to pass... sincerely I don't know where they got the 6-month-rule from, but let's just wait and see.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

I'd say when lemmy 0.19 is officially released if liftoff isn't promptly updated to work then I'll considered it abandoned.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'd like to know as well, I like it way more than other apps but haven't seen it update in a while, plus I noticed comments not showing up in some threads even though they're there on the desktop browser.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

These is a bug report about comments not showing up if they are nested more than 10 levels deep.

https://github.com/liftoff-app/liftoff/issues/516

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Well that'll be it then. I'm gonna switch to another app until it's fixed. I really like liftoff though, so hopefully it'll get fixed and this app won't be abandoned.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I asked the same to one of the devs two weeks ago but didn’t get a response.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The last thing we ever heard from the developer was that he just became a father. I just assume taking care of a kid is insanely time consuming.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

There’s not just one Developer. If I remember correctly there’s at least two doing different things.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Boost and Connect are good alternatives.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I use Eternity

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Summit is underrated

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I was searching for a way to donate to the developer today and couldn't find one, does anyone know if this is an option? I hope it's still being developed too because it's by far my favorite Lemmy app 😭

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is nobody using Sync for Lemmy?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sync is kind of in the same situation but there is at least confirmation of an update coming with 0.19

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sync has been in this situation since 2013, but ljdawson always brings the complete API standard featureset under the latest UI design guideline.

I can't recall how many iterations Sync for Reddit went through in its lifecycle.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh I'm a longterm fan too. I'm just saying if a couple months without updates bothers you it's not the app for you.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Not to change the topic to Sync, but Lemmy itself is still at the rapid development stage. The API is not yet stable. So any app needs to also have rapid development or things will gradually stop working. For me thats especially the case when the app is paid for.