ap-andersson

What country are you in?

There are a bunch of different protocols used to exchange scheduled and live transit information out there. And there are also a lot of different companies actually operating the vehicles (Transport Authorities). Sometimes several within one large city. But even if they have different systems underneath often they expose one of the popular protocols. Often there are even rules/law about certain protocols that you HAVE to support.

In USA that is mostly GTFS and GFTS-RT. I dod not think its a law but something about what you have to do to get funds maybe? I'm in Europe so my memory is foggy.

In EU I believe its NeTEx and SIRI. And every member nation needs a national hub where all transport authorities shares its data openly.

GTFS + GTFS-RT is very popular among consumer apps since its both pretty simple and pull-based. Static data is in CSV-files in a ZIP-file and the realtime data comes via Protobuf. If you check sources on the page this post is about you will se many GTFS sources. Ofc even transit systems built for the european standards can expose GTFS via a translation layer to support a broader range of consumers easily.

When it comes to signs at bus-stops there are those that are fed with this kind of data and can show both timetable data and realtime data based on the vehicles position. Here those signs are everywhere (Sweden) and I know there are plenty in the rest of Europe aswell. Outside of that I don't know if they are used as much.

You can also go to View in the menu and click "Filter by active branch" (Ctrl+Shift+A).

Also if you, like me, wanted to blame or view history for specific files there does not seem to be a way by clicking in the GUI to achieve it. But by using Ctrl+P you get the command search and can search for "Blame" or "File history".

Or a way worse touchpad experience. No swiping geastures. No smooth scrolling. FN-buttons not working. Or any other million issues. I have never been able to install Linux on a laptop and getting things to work within a weekend. And then reverting becuase I need my computer.

Yeah and its $40 per year it seems. While its good that you can continue using your version after that it does seem just a little much. I'm not sure I even want to try it now because I don't want to like it and then decide I can't afford it. I'm not against yearly license cost at all, I think that it can be hard for software companies to make something good without it. But for a new software it seems just a tad high. And I guess it will seem even more depending on where you live.

To be honest I had forgot that it was an option. I zeroed in on the other alternative from the get go since I was the developer of the app and its very limited in its usefulness. Did not want to create work for others when I thought I could easily do the work :)

To be honest, not really. I wanted to first successfully get my app published before even thinking about that. I would need to explain WHAT to improve and HOW to improve it for it to be useful and that I cannot do until I am more familiar with the project. But it is a good point.

I myself use the following that are on F-Droid:

- Hacki for Hacker News

- Immich

- Organic Maps

- Synchting-Fork

- VLC

- Voice Audiobook Player

In general F-Droid works well for me even if I have only maybe 2-3 apps that I get from there. I think it's good that it exists.

There could be some improvements on the process of adding an app though. I recently made a very small app for myself that I thought "maybe a couple of people would find this useful, I should add it to F-Droid".

I started by reading their docs on how to add a new app. I created an account on gitlab, forked their repo and added my app. Their pipeline failed without telling me why. After reading and re-reading everything a bunch of times I had to give up and look for help. The instructions said to fix all pipeline problems before creating a merge request.

So I go to the contact page where there are a bunch of options. I chose IRC and join. Ask for help. No answer or any message sent in the channel for the next 24 hours. At this point I am getting a bit irritated and are thinking about truly giving up. Then eventually someone answers in the channel and says "create a merge request and someone will help you". Which is what the docs said NOT to do. Fine. Ok. I will create it.

I go to Gitlab and chose the right template for the merge request. And now I get a whole bunch of new instructions and questions that I have to answer that the docs never mentioned. And it even mentions in that template that I should TRY to fix pipeline problems, or someone will help me (still going against official docs on their site). Since there was a bunch of questions I would have to look up to properly answer I did not have the time to do it right away... And I still have not done it. Its on a todo-list.

tl;dr: F-Droid works okey but the whole process of submitting a new app for someone that has not gone through it before could be made way better with some updated and unified instructions.

Well I have installed latest APK from their site. Browsed for and installed apps without a problem. On my Pixel 9 Pro. So at least its not a bug affecting everyone.

What is broken in F-Droid? I just got Android 15 and are using F-Droid but have not noticed anything broken yet.

Sorry for the late answer. Yes is uses Google Drive to sync the information. It is separate from Firefox account and syncs based on the Google account you are logged in with in the extension.