Make contributing easier

[Flaburgan]

It should be as easy as possible to develop for Axolotl. And now is a good time to ask ourselves what could be improved as Hacktoberfest is about to start and that would hopefully bring new people.

Ideas (please complete):

• Improve the readme
  • Remove Migrating from janimo/axolotl part?
  • It's not clear what Run flags is about, if it's about the backend go run . command then it should be placed next to it
  • Remove Installation on UT as it is now available in the OpenStore, and that's indicated at the very beginning of the Readme?
  • Move the Translations paragraph as it is currently between Installation of development environment and Run development. Those two should probably be merged btw
• Fix VUE_APP_WS_ADDRESS=10.0.0.2 npm run serve as it looks like it can connect to the phone anymore. At least that's what Firefox console tells me
• Provide some fake data to load locally with all the different states of the application, as currently once launched the devs are stuck on the registering screen and can't continue if they don't have a phone number. Ideally, a secret route would load it, so we can try Axolotl on secondary phone for example

[olof-nord]

Regarding the backend flags: The documentation is currently not up to date.

The available flags are as follows:

./axolotl --help
Usage of ./axolotl:
  -e string
        use either electron, ut, lorca, server or me
  -eDebug
        use to show development console in electron
  -host string
        Host to serve UI from. (default "127.0.0.1")
  -port string
        Port to serve UI from. (default "9080")
  -qml string
        The qml file to load. (default "qml/phoneui/main.qml")

[olof-nord]

It is not clear to me what QML file is expected by the -qml flag: What is the purpose and intention of this?

[nanu-c]

QT/QML provides a webengineview which is basically a chromium engine that is shipped with qt. With the -qml flag it's possible to use different qml files for the different integrations like Plasma Mobile, Lomiri or SailfishOs. -e ut is a shorthand for loading the ubuntu touch specific qml file

[olof-nord]

It should be as easy as possible to develop for Axolotl. And now is a good time to ask ourselves what could be improved as Hacktoberfest is about to start and that would hopefully bring new people.

Ideas (please complete):

* Improve the readme

  * Remove `Migrating from janimo/axolotl` part?
  * It's not clear what `Run flags` is about, if it's about the backend `go run .` command then it should be placed next to it
  * Remove `Installation on UT` as it is now available in the OpenStore, and that's indicated at the very beginning of the Readme?
  * Move the `Translations` paragraph as it is currently between `Installation of development environment` and `Run development`. Those two should probably be merged btw

* Fix `VUE_APP_WS_ADDRESS=10.0.0.2 npm run serve` as it looks like it can connect to the phone anymore. At least that's what Firefox console tells me

* Provide some fake data to load locally with all the different states of the application, as currently once launched the devs are stuck on the registering screen and can't continue if they don't have a phone number. Ideally, a secret route would load it, so we can try Axolotl on secondary phone for example

• In general, I think we shouldnt remove, but keep the main readme clean and concise.
• The Migrating from janimo/axolotl part could go to a separate document, docs/MIGRATE.md, and linked from the main readme.
• The Run flags can be better documented, this I find belongs in the main readme though, an example would be very useful.
• The Installation on UT should be kept, but moved to docs/INSTALL.md (this is partially done with https://github.com/nanu-c/axolotl/pull/195)
• The Translations section could be moved into its own document, docs/TRANSLATIONS.md, and linked from the main readme.
• It is not clear to me what the VUE_APP_WS_ADDRESS is or was used for.
• Fake data: fantastic idea. I would vote for a solution which isnt using go or javascript/vue code but instead JSON or YAML documents which can be read during startup - that way we are separating data from code.

[olof-nord]

I think there is one more thing to do in regards to this.

In the main readme there are currently three sections, which all covers more or less the same topic: How to set up a local development environment.

• Installation of development environment
• Run development
• Run frontend and connect to phone ip

I could see these three put together into one separate document at docs/CONTRIBUTING.md.