About the deprecation of Dev Home

[Lamparter]

What?! Surely there are people who are interested in continuing the work on Dev Home?
I am a big fan of devhome and seeing it go away makes me feel heartbroken 😢
I for one would love to help continue Dev Home.

Originally posted by @Lamparter in #4028 (comment)

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I want to raise this with the contributors to Dev Home.
This app has a lot of potential, and I simply can't see why it's being deprecated.

Abandoning a project, especially an open source one, is a big move. It makes me really sad to see this happen to Dev Home.

While it has received criticism, it's about the potential of the app. There are all sorts of possibilities for Dev Home, and I'm sure there are many people who would like to help make them a reality.

I'm opening this issue to enable discussion about this - does any contributor also share my opinion?
I'm sure there are others just like me who really want to help out and would love to help continue work on Dev Home.

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From the Windows App Community:

It's clear Dev Home has some kind of future, or audience
It has an active community and user base (as @FireCubeStudios pointed out, 3.7k stars)
And as a Microsoft app, it's not easy to abandon this kind of project
There are a lot of people who put a lot of work into this project, and simply abandoning it seems like an easy way out
Right now [you call it] a clone of Powertoys, but there are all sorts of possibilities for an app like this
There could a git client, build status monitor, terminal integration, and API explorer built in, for example
There are endless possibilities for an all in one app like Dev Home

We can't forget that it has an existing user base and it's an established project
It might be "useless" now as you say, but with the right outlook and planning it can be made into a substantial app

[MasterMann]

I mean, this is typical Microsoft for ya, first they release a good product, and if it doesn't take off immediately - instead of investing more they simply abandon, or screw it up. At least this is open-source, I guess.

[infinitepower18]

First they discontinue Windows Subsystem for Android, and now this?

Maybe they couldn't figure out how to integrate Copilot into Dev Home, since that is all they care about nowadays

[Lamparter]

It's not easy to abandon an open source project like this, especially with a lot of enthusiastic users and contributors.
Yes, I agree, it has received a fair amount of criticism, but there are so many ways it could be improved and made more feature-rich, to the point where simply abandoning it is a shock in and of itself.

It's a very big move to just close a project like this.

[FireCubeStudios]

3.7k stars

[Lamparter]

3.7k stars

That's more than 99% of projects will ever get ever.

That's a big figure, and it demonstrates that Dev Home certainly has an audience.

[Lamparter]

I've gone ahead and created a fork, Lamparter/Dev-Home where I'll begin work on Dev Home to bring it back, with new features in partnership with the Windows App Community discord server.

Stay tuned for more information!

[KhoobBabe]

Dev Home was the only source of happiness in this god foresaken life, ever since my wife left me, I always knew Dev Home will be my source of comfort. Going to work I only looked forward to opening my Dev Home. It always felt "Homely". Now that microsoft is taking it away, it feels like my divorce all over again (Debra please take me back). I urge @microsoftopensource to bring it back

[Lamparter]

(sorry that's quite a large image) I created a poll in the discord server I mentioned, the Windows App Community. Please join the server and vote if you can!

[JanRajnoha]

@Lamparter Could you please share link to poll?

[Lamparter]

@JanRajnoha here it is: Windows App Community > #lamparter-labs > Poll: What would you like to see in Dev Home?

I think you'll need to be part of the Windows App Community discord server first to access it though.

[Jay-o-Way]

This issue should be pinned above the others, on the Issues page

[Jay-o-Way]

There's one thing I liked to use: the bit where it moves nuget cache to a different location. I moved it to my Dev drive, which makes a lot of sense to me. Only wish it would create the environment variable at the same time.