Just when you thought that the justCheckers project has languished into oblivion… it is back! As part of a larger project to “finish what I started”, I plan on getting more work done on justCheckers. The idea is to revitalize the project and make it fun to contribute to it on-and-off basis.
One of the first things I wanted to do is make the project more modular. While I have worked as an Android developer in the past, now a days I found myself working on Java web projects. So while getting a single Android app out would probably be easier than having support for multiple platforms, I do miss experimenting with different technologies via this project. That is why I decided to separate out the project into a core (or kernel) module that can be used on in various Java technologies: Android, web, desktop and console/terminal. Also I thought it was time to revitalize the project with the experience I’ve gained over the years. Hence I am proud to announce my rather ambitious project to target multiple platforms.
As a way to make it easier to pull this off, I’ve setup a nice uniform build automation system using Gradle. I’ve just set it up a rough skeleton for now, but Gradle [http://www.gradle.org/] makes it fairly easy to set everything up. I just merged it into trunk so feel free to play with it! At the moment only the Android client builds completely. However soon enough I plan on getting initial versions of the desktop, and web clients up.
Finally, I also miss the collaborative team that formed around the original justCheckers. Now while everyone (except for me) has moved on, I would like to once again throw up the door to new contributors. If you are interesting in any of the below, contact me by email [see https://github.com/dorianpula]. Also I accept github pull requests if you prefer that.
- Refactoring the core code to be modular enough to be callable from a standard Java and Android.
- Making a functional Android client.
- Making a functional web app using SpringMVC and a JS-Web 2.0 ish frontend (HTML5/jQuery/Angular?)
- Making a functional console/terminal client.
- Adding in documentation on the project wiki: https://github.com/dorianpula/justcheckers/wiki
- Re-skinning the project website.
- Adding unit tests (TestNG).