2024-04-13 – Equestria.dev's software plans for 2024

If you would like to know how our plans are going, you can check out our progress report that we keep regularly updated.

Equestria.dev is now releasing its software plans for 2024. While 2023 saw the creation of numerous new applications, Equestria.dev would prefer to focus on maintaining existing software this year and improving code quality.

Discontinued applications

Some applications are too complex and have not encountered sufficient success or real use to be worth maintaining anymore:

• "Ponycule" (now Plural Connect)'s end-user interface has been discontinued in version 6b796258 and was already mostly removed in version 5860551d.

• Delta will be discontinued on June 16th. Progressive removal of features has started in version 5.3.0 and commit 1a0e9dc1 and will continue until the discontinuation date with one feature removal per week.

• Chatroom will be discontinued in early June. Announcement of this discontinuation was published with commit b99e22e2. Chatroom 3, which was announced earlier, has been cancelled.

Potential discontinuations

Some other applications may potentially be discontinued in the future:

• Starshine version 13 and Codename Violette might be discontinued in favor of unifing both softwares into version 14.

• The Axis programming language might also be discontinued as it lacks sufficient traction and the core developer lacks sufficient experience in Rust programming.

Restructurings

Some projects are going to be handed off to other developers as Equestria.dev cannot handle responsibility for them any longer:

• PonyCon Countdown will stop being developed or managed by Equestria.dev, with only hosting remaining on Equestria.dev's premises as part of a partnership between PonyCon Countdown and Equestria.dev

Rewrites

Applications that are start to become hard to maintain will be rewritten in other languages before they become harder to maintain:

• Power Tools will be rewritten in TypeScript to make it easier to add, remove and maintain commands. However, Power Tools remains a low priority project.

• Prisbeam has already started being rewritten to TypeScript with the introduction of libprisbeam in commit ff281c30. We plan to further rewrite the entirety of Prisbeam's code (except for the Prisbeam Updater application) into TypeScript to make it easier to manage. In the long-term, we also plan to rewrite Prisbeam to use the Tauri application framework.

• The status.equestria.dev software will be rewritten in either TypeScript or Rust to make it more extensible and possibly make it usable by third-parties.

Continued support

Projects that have not been mentioned on this page will still be maintained:

• Maretime Sans will still be maintained, with support for the base Latin character set expected to release this year.

• Ponypush plan to detach from the upstream application (ntfy) to add more features and turn it into an all-in-one Equestria.dev application. Only security and bug fixes from upstream will be implemented into Ponypush as Equestria.dev is not making use of the new features.

• Sunny Starbot will remain hosted, as well as the Sunny Starbot Plus extension. Starbot v12 might release to Plus users this year, with Starbot v11-turbo releasing to normal users.

• where-rs will remain in the works, with an expected public release later this year, after approval from the development team.