Introducing: Bubble and Geminispace.org

πŸ“… 2023-05-13

🏷 Bubble, Gemini

I have begun a new Gemini project:

πŸ’¬ Bubble

It is a Gemini-based bulletin board system that can be summarized as a union of Station, Reddit, WordPress, and issue trackers like GitHub Issues. It is implemented as an extension module to GmCapsule, my Gemini server.

Although I have written Bubble primarily for my own needs, it is also purposefully designed to be generally useful for other individuals and communities. Therefore, it has multiple objectives and target audiences:

That may seem like a lot of ground to cover, but in practice these use cases have much in common. The same post & comment thread structure is used everywhere, and features like post tagging and user @-mentions are available throughout the capsule.

A few features worth highlighting:

Bubble v1.0 is about 4000 lines of Python, written enthusiastically over a two-week period. (For comparison, GmCapsule itself is 1900 lines.) Everything is very nascent and there are some sharp corners, but generally things should be functional.

Geminispace.org

The Bubble instance you are on now is called Geminispace.org. It is a sister site to skyjake.fi: you may note that these are on the same IP address and now share the same server certificate. I am running Bubble here primarily for dogfooding purposes, but with the ambitious goal of sunsetting the Lagrange GitHub issue tracker and moving the issues here instead:

There is a lot to say about large corporations trying to control the Git hosting ecosystem, and while better alternatives like Codeberg exist, it has always struck me as a fundamental conflict to have to depend on the Web for a core part of Gemini software development. The combination of Gemini + Email + Git seems a much better fit for Gemini projects. The more I can stay away from the web browser, the better. Bubble is still somewhat rudimentary in its current state but with some further work, I believe it has a chance to be quite a nice tool for issue tracking, fully in Geminispace.

Bubble can be configured for open registration of new users, and Geminispace.org currently allows that. You are welcome to come kick the tires with me and see how the platform evolves! Personally, I'll probably try posting more via u/skyjake and see how that feels.

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The original Gemtext version of this page can be accessed with a Gemini client: gemini://skyjake.fi/gemlog/2023-05_introducing-bubble.gmi