Exciting News About SCALE Apps

[JoshDW19]

Here's some exciting news from Kris I thought I'd share regarding the new Community App Repository. We're excited to have a chance to bring you a better native App experience and are looking forward to Community Members contributing and testing this new functionality. Please let us know what you think and feel welcome to post feedback here. Stay tuned for more updates. There are big things coming down the pipe.

"We've also heard the asks from users to start cultivating our own Community App repository on the iX side and are pleased to see that it is starting to take off. Those Apps are available out of box on 22.12.2 or later. We're happy to welcome any collaborators over there, as we are churning out new Apps pretty often now."

 

[HoneyBadger]

For users who aren't ready to upgrade to 22.12.2 yet, but want to enable the Community train for testing on 22.12.1, you can use the Apps -> Manage Catalogs page, and use the three-dot menu beside the Official catalog. Choose Edit and you'll be able to check the Community train.

The Community apps are still very fresh, so they may still be subject to frequent changes as we continue to publish more of them.

 

[Rudi Pittman]

So happy to see this! Since now everyone is having to reinstall ALL their truecharts apps it's an excellent time to transition to the offical community apps or if the app is not available then to use the docker button to create it.

 

[Trevor68]

I'd love to give a few ago, but can't work out how to use SSL/HTTPS for them???

 

[danb35]

The question is, will whoever maintains the repo be any more on top of the task than whoever was/is maintaining the community plugin repo? Only time will tell, but we've seen this show before, and it didn't end well last time.

 

[Davvo]

I guess the question is: will you handle this differently from CORE?

 

[danb35]

I wasn't trying to put too fine a point on it, but yep, that's the question.

 

[wsoteros]

Hi everyone.

While I can't address all questions at this time, I can assure you we will release more information about what is to come and what to expect very soon. Please bear with us for just a little bit longer!

 

[danb35]

it's an excellent time to transition to the offical community apps

...and trust--with no objective reason to do so at this time--that iX will do a better job of maintaining them than they have with the plugins. They have a long history to deal with, and it isn't good. Oh, and give up Ingress. You're pissed that TrueCharts is requiring reinstallation of all the apps, which is fair enough. But the alternative to bad isn't necessarily good.

 

[WI_Hedgehog]

While I can't address all questions at this time, I can assure you we will release more information about what is to come and what to expect very soon. Please bear with us for just a little bit longer!

This is pretty consistent with what was said in another thread.
Not to pile on, but you didn't address any questions, which was part of the complaint.

As a suggestion, "We're working on X" is better than keeping users in the dark. I understand this is a volunteer project and resources are limited, plus you've been doing a great job on getting things out, so please take this constructively as that's how it's meant.

 

[Rudi Pittman]

...and trust--with no objective reason to do so at this time--that iX will do a better job of maintaining them than they have with the plugins. They have a long history to deal with, and it isn't good. Oh, and give up Ingress. You're pissed that TrueCharts is requiring reinstallation of all the apps, which is fair enough. But the alternative to bad isn't necessarily good.

If you are worried about ingress odds are you know how to spin up your OWN docker containers AND run a vpn container you can access to log into your machine securely or use something like tailscale. The average joe just wants a simple method to spin up a container.

I chose to wait and badmouth them AFTER they screw up..not before they even get a chance to try one way or the other. (and no core apps don't count in the equation). You've made your opinion well known in several of the threads I ran across and so have I. I see no reason to keep on flogging the dead horse.

 

[danb35]

I chose to wait and badmouth them AFTER they screw up..not before they even get a chance to try one way or the other. (and no core apps don't count in the equation).

Why don't CORE plugins count in the equation? iX have a long history of announcing and not delivering or otherwise following through, and the community plugins are just one small part of that. I hope this time will be different, but I think my skepticism is wholly justified. I'm not going to badmouth community apps (unless and) until they show it's appropriate, but I'm also not going to trust them (unless and) until they earn it.

If you are worried about ingress odds are you know how to spin up your OWN docker containers AND run a vpn container you can access to log into your machine securely

Nope, and that isn't the point of it--for me, anyway. What Ingress does for me--which I asked for seven years ago--is allow me to securely access all the apps by hostname without weird port numbers. And you'll notice that the first question posted to this thread--and not by me--was how to enable HTTPS for these apps. Under TrueCharts, that's something that's entirely straightforward, and the same answer applies to any of their charts, at least so far as I've looked. It remains to be seen what the answer is, or if there is one, for these--I'd suppose the next obvious thing would be nginx Proxy Manager, though I remain partial to Caddy.

 

[Rudi Pittman]

Why don't CORE plugins count in the equation? iX have a long history of announcing and not delivering or otherwise following through, and the community plugins are just one small part of that. I hope this time will be different, but I think my skepticism is wholly justified. I'm not going to badmouth community apps (unless and) until they show it's appropriate, but I'm also not going to trust them (unless and) until they earn it.

Nope, and that isn't the point of it--for me, anyway. What Ingress does for me--which I asked for seven years ago--is allow me to securely access all the apps by hostname without weird port numbers. And you'll notice that the first question posted to this thread--and not by me--was how to enable HTTPS for these apps. Under TrueCharts, that's something that's entirely straightforward, and the same answer applies to any of their charts, at least so far as I've looked. It remains to be seen what the answer is, or if there is one, for these--I'd suppose the next obvious thing would be nginx Proxy Manager, though I remain partial to Caddy.

For one thing core apps and scale apps are setup totally different. A helm chart that calls a pre existing docker container is simplicity compared to what was required to setup a plugin in a jail on the old system where they had to package everything themselves required by the app. Apples vs Oranges. Building the equivalent of a docker container vs a flow chart that calls an external app. You also have the ability to spin up your OWN docker container for apps that are not included where with jails you either had to spin up a vm or wait patiently. iohyve was NOT user friendly either. You also always have the capacity to do as someone else mentioned and run portainer and docker in a vm then manage your own apps yourself. Not something I'd recommend but it's there.

 

[Davvo]

Why don't CORE plugins count in the equation? iX have a long history of announcing and not delivering or otherwise following through, and the community plugins are just one small part of that.

I like to think they are able to learn from past mistakes.

 

[danb35]

A helm chart that calls a pre existing docker container is simplicity compared to what was required to setup a plugin in a jail on the old system where they had to package everything themselves required by the app.

That's not how plugins were/are built under CORE 12 and 13, but that's really a side issue. The comparison I'm drawing is to the community plugins repo, to which individual plugin maintainers did/do not have write access. And they'd often have to wait months for their own updates to their own plugins to be committed--because whatever iX personnel had write access couldn't or wouldn't review and act on those PRs in a timely fashion.

This sounds very similar--an iX repo to which iX holds the keys and invites community contributions. Yes, I'm assuming that individual app maintainers aren't going to have write access to commit their changes; this is something we haven't yet been told. But if that is the case (and I think it's entirely logical to assume that it is pending further information), it sounds like a setup for exactly the problem that was there with the community plugins under CORE. It doesn't have to be, of course. If iX actually resources this appropriately, and whoever's responsible for maintaining the repo stays on top of it, this could work well. I hope it does, and I hope they've learned from past mistakes--but those mistakes are many, serious, and long-running until very recent times, hence my skepticism.

I don't really like being the downer, but I don't think it's wise to treat a brand-new and completely untested set of community apps as the holy grail, or even as better than TrueCharts--it's just too early, IMO, to say, and (again IMO) there's plenty of good reason to be cautious.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Plus the "magic Docker bullet" will not fix "the problems with jails" because none of the problems with the old plugins system is actually rooted in technology. That's why I also keep my expectations low.

We could have had a great experience on CORE if merge/pull requests would have been handled in a manner similar to e.g. OPNsense.

I will appreciate being proven overly sceptic.

 

[indivision]

Having a set of additional apps with a support location on this forum would be a promising development in my view.

 

[morganL]

Plus the "magic Docker bullet" will not fix "the problems with jails" because none of the problems with the old plugins system is actually rooted in technology. That's why I also keep my expectations low.

We could have had a great experience on CORE if merge/pull requests would have been handled in a manner similar to e.g. OPNsense.

I will appreciate being proven overly sceptic.

Agreed there needs to be a change and we're working to allow more Community control of Plugins. Could you describe what OPNsense does that you think works?

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Agreed there needs to be a change and we're working to allow more Community control of Plugins. Could you describe what OPNsense does that you think works?

Timely amswers to pull requests. Simple as that. Questions/suggestions/critique within a day or two, decision about merge and eventually merge in the same time frame. Way less than a week to bring an update or a feature into e.g. a plugin.

 

[morganL]

Timely amswers to pull requests. Simple as that. Questions/suggestions/critique within a day or two, decision about merge and eventually merge in the same time frame. Way less than a week to bring an update or a feature into e.g. a plugin.

We'd prefer to move this function to the Community and will be recruiting volunteers. Hope you or other experienced contributors can help out.