Update
What happened
The Sublinks project went from full-throttle to frozen the moment my mental health hit a low point. The project is thawing as I work through recovery.
What's next
I've been thinking about Sublinks a lot. I realized I was creating another choice that offered some advantages but piggybacked on Lemmy's ecosystem to gain a head start. This made me feel bored and sparked a broader idea. I want to pivot. But first, ask whether this is worth me doing. Please, vote with details why.
So, I have a big idea and here is the quick of it:
Sublinks will change from the three services before (Federation, Front-end, Backend) to the following services: Identity Service, Group Service, Index Service, Sublinks Service. This project will create and operate one or more instances of each of these services.
They will each be fully independent fediverse services. This offers many benefits. For example, single-user vanity Identity Service instances.
Identity Service
Manages Person actors for ActivityPub for use on a Sublinks Service. aka Manages users' identities on the Fediverse. This service serves a Front-end UI for user account tasks and OAuth2. Used to host the images for the account.
Group Service
Manages group discussions in a Post / Thread format. Accounts are authenticated through the Identity Service. Responsible for hosting multimedia.
Index Service
An index is a service that Identity Service and Group Service publish for indexing. Indexes can subscribe to Group Service servers, and vice versa; the same applies to Identity Service instances. This service provides the search and sorting of content.
Sublinks Service
The front-end for user interaction with Sublinks. An instance of Sublinks Service will show the Sublinks threadiverse through a curated lens shaped by an admin-chosen configuration of Sublinks services.
Next
Please, let me know what you think of it all. I've been working on some proof-of-concept stuff to see how viable it is. But it's all just begun.
Example
Consider the following instances group by service:
Sublinks Service
- dark.sublinks.org
- light.sublinks.org
- sfw.sublinks.org
Identity Service
- identity.sublinks.org
Index Service
- all.index.sublinks.org
- sfw.index.sublinks.org
- nsfw.index.sublinks.org
Group Service
- general.group.sublinks.org
- announcements.group.sublinks.org
- comics.group.sublinks.org
- sublinks.group.sublinks.org
- sublinks-support.group.sublinks.org
- world-news.group.sublinks.org
Oh yeah...
I want to do it in Python.
Thanks! The Mobile apps would operate much like a Sublinks instance, choosing which identity services and indexes to show. I would imagine they'd just allow all of them. An alternative approach would be for the Mobile App developer to create a web service to manage those decisions and build their own API for their app to integrate with.
This microservice plan allows more people to hold different parts and reduces the risk of duplication and total loss when one instance goes down.
Yes that does sound pretty cool, on a technical level.
I've never built a system that was based around microservices but if it's a way of doing things that you enjoy and have experience in (or want experience with!) then go for it :D