[Announce] New GUI for Hawkbit #2868
Description
This is NOT an issue but I didn't know which is the best method to communicate. This is linked to #1376, even if that issue is closed (but without solutions).
Even if a new "Simple GUI" was reintroduced, the original issues created at the time Vaadin 8.0 was dismissed remain actual. After rereading the whole history and what Hawkbit's maintainer and developers wrote, I came to the conclusion that it is wish from Hawkbit's development to split the GUI as much as possible from the backend, and the later commits to improve the REST API went in that direction. So I have started with my company the development of a new GUI for the Hawkbit Server, and this has reached a good state now and we are starting to use it on productive systems. The GUI is a Web Application based on last "frontend" technologies, and it runs on nodejs server.
It has the goal to solve some previous issues:
- remove dependencies from the Hawkbit Server. It is a separate project, built outside Hawkbit's Java environment, and it just uses the REST API provided by Hawkbit.
- GUI and server do not need to run on the same server. GUI can be configured with which server must be connected
- design easier to change, even if it currently resembles the previous GUI.
- better UX
We plan to release the GUI under Github under an Open Source License soon - at the moment, it can be checked on a demo server at https://hawkbitgui.nabladev.com with demo Hawkbit credentials. This will be shutdown as soon as the sources will be published and it is just to give an idea.
I hope this work can be well accepted by Hawkbit's community and users.