GitNex for Gitea - Interview with the developer of a fantastic app

Did you have any prior development or coding experience?

Yes, I have over 10 years of experience in software development in different fields including cloud computing.

What was the most challenging aspect of developing mobile app?

Once I decided to develop GitNex, there were few things, and addressing them was necessary before a public release. The major one was what license GitNex should use and which model. Finally, I settled with a GPLv3 license and an open-source model to have more open ideas and adaptation across different groups.
The 2nd challenge was the selection of technology and I selected Java as the main language instead of Kotlin to have broader development options.

_{Swatian Software Works}

GitNex is developed and distributed under the Swatian Software Works network. Arif, the interviewee, and other contributors work on it to add features and improvements.GitNex is an app to manage code repositories for Gitea(https://gitea.io) on Android platform. It is available as free/paid and open source, everyone can build it by themselves and contribute to it.

Name a few of your favorite apps and reason you love them.

I love open source and mostly use open source apps. F-droid Store is an alternative to Play Store where limited apps are available which are built from source. GitNex is also available on the F-droid store for users who don’t want the Play Store.
- F-droid (Provides free and open source apps as an alternative)
- Hacker News (My daily breakfast news app about technology and information)
- NextCloud (For cloud storage, notes, chat, etc.)

How long have you been working on this app?

I started working on GitNex starting 2019 and the 1st release hit the stores on 15th March. It’s been over 2 years now and GitNex have a strong base in its community which it caters to.

What need of the user did you have in mind when developing this app?

One day, I went through a series of ideas for an app, and with a little bit of research, I found out that Gitea does not have a mobile app and it was the trigger point for the idea. The idea was to provide a platform for the users to fulfill their software development needs where they interact in a native way instead of opening a web browser and going through the web UI which was too much time-consuming and cluttered.

In what way do you think your app is better than similar apps on the market? Please describe in detail what innovation you think you bring and what you are proud of in your app.

When I started GitNex there was no alternative for a mobile platform for Gitea, there is one now but it is lacking features because it provides other platform access too. While GitNex focuses on one platform and tries to provide as many features as possible and that’s because GitNex's motto is “Do one thing, do it better”.

The current Play Store rating speaks for itself that how useful GitNex is for the users who use it on daily basis. That makes me personally motivated to add features in a timely manner for each release.

The other thing I would like to address is the ease of using GitNex, an example would be a notification system. You are notified for every action that happens across your accounts and from the notification screen you can straight go to the ticket/issue to reply and read other users' comments. User privacy matters to me and that’s the reason I never opted for using Google Firebase for notifications.

What are your future plans and expected features of the coming new versions of this app?

Each release of GitNex is packed with features and the feature I am thinking of right now to implement in the next release is Notes where users can just take notes and later on extend this feature to integrate with tickets/issues.

Assuming new users of your app are reading this page. What do you want to ask them to do (contact you about X, Share the app, etc.)?

If you are a developer and use Gitea; either self-hosted or using a third-party service like codeberg.org, gitea.com can install GitNex on your Android phone and be connected with your coding life. As GitNex is open source and we have a repository(https://codeberg.org/gitnex/GitNex), you can join us anytime to share the issues you may encounter or just ask for a feature. And of course sharing is caring, feel free to share and spread the word. :)