Heading for Telescope 2.6 🚀

It is time for updating my blog with a few thoughts about working on Telescope!

Impression of my first release

I couldn't feel more accomplished with what I managed to finish for Telescope, version 2.5. In my last post, I mentioned that I was going to work on integrating YouTube videos on Telescope, after filing the PRs (#2596, #2581) that addressed it more than a couple of months ago.

That experience of seeing a feature I worked on being live in the website is something that I don't get to experience all the time, since some of the open source work I focused before was primarily bug fixing.

It was really nice to see everybody power through the release, giving their best to accomplish the tasks we were assigned. I am looking forward to release 2.6!

😋😎🤩

Telescope 2.6

After attending the triage meeting, I noticed that several things may expect us in release 2.6. Some of these include extending the YouTube feature by including a YouTube information bar on the side of the post.

Focusing on the work

I wanted to focus on two main areas: the multimedia integration of Telescope, and the React Native client.

• Multimedia integration: after working on the YouTube video aggregation feature, I kind of got attached to the overall feature set that was brought up in issue #1026. I kind of want to see the streaming preview to be on the actual website for real! I also need to extend the current YouTube aggregation that make it more usable.
• React Native client: I am interested in exploring modern mobile development. Since this area is fairly new to me, I am still exploring how we can apply it to Telescope. Right now, there is an ongoing discussion on using React Native for Telescope!

Collaborating with others

Currently, Telescope has an active community members, that are working on their interested areas of work! I know there are several people interested in the React Native client, but I hadn't had the opportunity to talk with them yet... 🤐😬😳 I will try to introduce myself to them so we can count on each other for any discussions we will carry through the semester.

MVP for release 2.6

An MVP for release 2.6 related to the multimedia integration might be out of the question. The idea I had depends on the sign-in and sign-on workflow that it is still pending.

An MVP of the React Native is more plausible, as we would need to design a front-end that can replicate the current web client. However, I feel that the discussion for the React Native has to mature a little bit more so that we can have a direct plan on this (we are still discussing).

So, I suppose I would focus on the multimedia MVP. This means:

• Finish the sign-on/sign-in workflow.
• Integrate the current YouTube integration with the workflow.
• Perhaps finish the microservice port?
• Implement the MVP for streaming.

Sounds easy, but I am sure there will be a few roadblocks on the way!🥵😵🤪🤯

As it is now, I think we can parallelize the microservice port and the sign-on/sign-in workflow. To move it forward though, I think I will need to file a few issues to address these ones.

Researching for the MVP

Clearly, I need to figure out a way to integrate with a well-known streaming service, Twitch! That means finding out what APIs they offer to maybe embed a Twitch livestream on a web page.

Also, I need to dive deeper into the code to start moving the microservice port again, as it is currently frozen. I will need to discover what things are stopping it from advancing.🧐🕵🏻‍♀️🕵🏻‍♀️

Filing the issues

I am not really sure what issues to file for the week, as this is a whole new area of work that I am venturing in.... Good luck to me!

Risks

One thing I need to focus on is advancing on the frozen work to push toward the feature I would like to implement. This is some kind of gamble, as I may take more than a single week to figure out the sign-on/sign-in workflow, as well as the microservice port. We would need to parallelize the work efficiently so that we can end this by the end of the week.

So, to encourage people to work on these old projects, I need to file small, short issues that people would like to get done in an hour. That way, several people get involved, and everybody contributes to finish the old project.😌🐱‍🏍🐱‍💻

Conclusion

Phew...😄 that was a long blog! There is a lot waiting for me in Telescope 2.6. I hope I will be able to meet my own expectations.🦾