[HN Gopher] Elegant open source project tracking, Trello like bu...
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       Elegant open source project tracking, Trello like but self-hosted
        
       Author : thushanfernando
       Score  : 207 points
       Date   : 2024-03-18 10:16 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | ImHereToVote wrote:
       | Looks really nice. Is there a roadmap Planka board?
        
       | orblivion wrote:
       | UI seems smoother than Trello or Wekan (on my rather slow
       | machine). Though maybe it's because the demo board doesn't have
       | very much data compared to what I have on those other two. And
       | maybe it has fewer features thus far to bloat the frontend.
        
         | loganmarchione wrote:
         | I believe the demo doesn't connect to a database backend. Their
         | GitHub says "without server features".
         | 
         | https://github.com/plankanban/planka
        
           | orblivion wrote:
           | My sense is that the thing that makes the other sites laggy
           | on my computer is UI stuff. Maybe not though.
        
       | rpigab wrote:
       | Looks nice, I selfhosted https://github.com/wekan/wekan for a
       | while, which is a MIT licensed heavily Trello-inspired
       | alternative, does someone know both Wekan and Plankanban and can
       | tell their differences?
        
         | xet7 wrote:
         | WeKan has MIT license. As maintainer of WeKan, I'm adding major
         | new features to WeKan. WeKan features are listed at
         | https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/Deep-Dive-Into-WeKan
         | 
         | Planka changed from MIT license to AGPL-3.0 license
         | https://github.com/plankanban/planka
         | 
         | There is Planka fork 4gaBoards with MIT license at
         | https://github.com/RARgames/4gaBoards , newest change one hour
         | ago.
        
       | poidos wrote:
       | Looks nice! An alternative is https://www.openproject.org/
        
         | eps wrote:
         | "Start free trial"
        
           | zettabomb wrote:
           | The base functionality is free (and this is far more than a
           | basic kanban). If you want more enterprisey features it's
           | paid, although I don't believe it's too difficult to bypass
           | the license check.
        
       | loganmarchione wrote:
       | I switched to Planka after Focalboard went community-
       | supported[1], but failed to appoint any community leaders. So
       | far, I'm very happy with Planka for my needs at home.
       | 
       | There are more self-hosted options in this link[2].
       | 
       | [1] https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard
       | 
       | [2] https://awesome-selfhosted.net/tags/task-management--to-
       | do-l...
        
         | alberth wrote:
         | Since you use to use Focalboard, do use your Mattermost (chat)?
         | 
         | Curious what your experience has been like using it?
        
           | vrinsd wrote:
           | I'm not the parent-level poster but I've stood-up a
           | Mattermost instance a few times and it's really easy to get
           | going and is good for a text-IM/DM channel/group service. The
           | desktop app or web-based interface work quite well and the
           | architecture is pretty sane, Javascript front-end, golang-
           | based "backend", Postgres database.
           | 
           | But, there are some frustrating aspects.
           | 
           | LDAP is only available in the "enterprise" edition which is
           | kind of crazy and there is no price-break for < 10 users. So
           | for personal / non-commercial usage if you want LDAP you're
           | placed into an enterprise bucket. I reached out to Mattermost
           | and pointed this out and even said "Hey, what about offering
           | a 10-user license for some reasonable fee?" No response.
        
       | colordrops wrote:
       | I'm frankly not a fan of the monolithic NextCloud, but the
       | "Decks" feature has good UX and a mobile app on Android, which
       | pretty much nothing else in the open source community has pulled
       | off.
        
         | lolc wrote:
         | Thanks for the hint! A friend recently asked about a kanban-
         | style app, and they're already using Nextcloud.
        
       | nico wrote:
       | Looks really good, great work!
       | 
       | Anyone knows of something like this but for the terminal?
       | 
       | I'm building a job searching app for the terminal and a main
       | upcoming feature is to have application tracking within the app.
       | It would be great to use a kanban system for it
       | 
       | Thank you!
        
         | bachmeier wrote:
         | This one got a lot of attention a while back:
         | https://github.com/smallhadroncollider/taskell
        
         | xet7 wrote:
         | For terminal, for example this, made with Rust:
         | https://github.com/yashs662/rust_kanban
        
           | nico wrote:
           | Really like the look of this one, super cool
        
       | bachmeier wrote:
       | For someone that's not a web developer, I found Kanboard to be
       | the easiest to set up, and it has all the basic features you'd
       | expect. It's a traditional PHP app where you copy the files to
       | your web server and set a few configuration options and you're
       | good. If you want to use it locally, you download it, run php -S
       | localhost:8080, and start using it.
       | 
       | https://kanboard.org/
       | 
       | Note: The project is in maintenance mode, it hasn't shut down or
       | been abandoned.
        
         | KronisLV wrote:
         | Also available as a Docker image, for example:
         | docker run -p 80:80 -t kanboard/kanboard:v1.2.8
         | 
         | https://docs.kanboard.org/v1/admin/docker/#running-the-conta...
         | (that page has info about persistent storage, configuration and
         | so on)
         | 
         | Honestly one of the fastest and least "bloated" pieces of
         | software in recent memory, way more responsive than something
         | like OpenProject (which I use as a self-hosted Jira replacement
         | for my personal needs), as long as the feature set is enough
         | for you. I did rather enjoy the cost reports of OpenProject, as
         | well as having all of my usual epics and whatnot, but kanban
         | works better for smaller projects than scrum.
        
           | samstave wrote:
           | Tangent - is there a Docker Wherehouse where I can find
           | dockers to DL an run, that HN would suggest and some use
           | cases of _" pull a docker from here to do X - super cool"_
        
             | tomrod wrote:
             | Docker hub has been one of the primary registries. Each of
             | the cloud providers typically have their own concept for
             | docker or image repositories, and you can build docker
             | files locally of you have a docker file in source code.
        
               | samstave wrote:
               | Thank you,
               | 
               | I was more looking for use-case as opposed to a barf of
               | all dockers....
               | 
               |  _" I want to do TASK so here are all the dependencises
               | for you to do TASK and how they will link"_
               | 
               | ---
               | 
               | And yeah; how do you tink a 3-year old in 2050 is going
               | to be able to setup his dev env? Do you want him to learn
               | binary.
        
               | oarsinsync wrote:
               | > And yeah; how do you tink a 3-year old in 2050 is going
               | to be able to setup his dev env?
               | 
               | Dunno about 2050, but it wasn't particularly difficult in
               | the 1980s.
        
             | Elidrake42 wrote:
             | The awesome selfhosted* list is a pretty good resource.
             | While it does mention if there's a Docker container, I've
             | found a few of the services without one listed do actually
             | offer one, just have to search for it.
             | 
             | * https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted
        
           | littlestymaar wrote:
           | What's the point of using Docker for PHP apps?
           | 
           | The main appeal of PHP for me has always been it's ability to
           | work as a "serverless" execution environment, long before
           | this marketing concept even existed, so hosting your own PHP
           | on a cloud machine with Docker sounds really backward to me.
        
             | diggan wrote:
             | > What's the point of using Docker for PHP apps?
             | 
             | Same reason you'd use Docker for anything, why would it
             | matter if it's Python, PHP or Rust?
             | 
             | Is there something specific about the language that makes
             | Python (or other language) more suitable with Docker for
             | you, compared to PHP?
             | 
             | (Personally I only use Docker when I start to deal with
             | multiple hosts/distributed architecture, which doesn't
             | happen a lot tbh)
        
             | beretguy wrote:
             | Programmers these days like to overcomplicate things for
             | some reason. I'm as puzzled as you are.
        
               | diggan wrote:
               | One person's over-complication is another person's
               | simplification, it's only "hacked together" if someone
               | else wrote it, etc, etc
        
               | lolinder wrote:
               | This comment shows a remarkable lack of curiosity. You're
               | not the least bit interested to know why so many people
               | find tools like Docker to be valuable?
        
               | anonymous_union wrote:
               | because raccoons like shiny things
        
               | smokel wrote:
               | It does show empathy, though.
               | 
               | Docker has its advantages, but the approach also has a
               | lot of disadvantages which are not so obvious to junior
               | developers.
               | 
               | Isolation seems fun, but the interfaces (Unix sockets
               | where anything goes) are extremely brittle. Version
               | management seems simple at first, but will become
               | horrible once old containers offer no upgrade path in the
               | future, or when the free hubs from today will become
               | tomorrow's subscription model.
               | 
               | I'm not advocating for PHP, but it sure made deployment
               | of several websites on one machine extremely simple.
               | Eventually version management destroyed some of the fun,
               | which will probably happen with Docker containers as
               | well, given enough time.
               | 
               | Java's application servers were initially also hailed
               | with similar enthusiasm as Docker containers, and look at
               | the complicated mess that has become.
               | 
               | To some, all that is old is new again.
        
             | tunesmith wrote:
             | For me, I have a cheap cloud server that handles multiple
             | low-traffic personal websites, side projects, etc. Each
             | project has a different tech stack and it can be months or
             | years before I circle back to one to bring it up to date. I
             | don't want to wrestle with making sure that I have the
             | right versions of php and apache for my ubuntu. Having them
             | all as docker containers makes it a lot easier, and a lot
             | easier to move to new servers, too.
        
               | KronisLV wrote:
               | To add to this, for me it really helps to look at any
               | piece of software that I want to run pretty much the same
               | way, as a self-contained bundle, not unlike an app
               | installed on a phone.
               | 
               | I can give them resource limits the same way (CPU/memory
               | limits, except easier than cgroups), as well as set
               | restart policies and have a clear look at what's
               | executing where, with something like Docker Swarm it
               | becomes like systemd across multiple nodes and scaling
               | up/down becomes easy, especially with load balancing for
               | network calls. Software like Portainer also has pretty
               | nice discoverability.
               | 
               | Speaking of networking, I don't have to worry about
               | tunnels or firewall configuration myself, can just expose
               | a web server that acts as a reverse proxy and give
               | everything else custom private networks that span across
               | nodes (with something like Docker Swarm again, though
               | Consul and Kubernetes have the same functionality,
               | details aside).
               | 
               | I can have custom port mappings (regardless of what the
               | software uses, I might not even care about digging in
               | some configuration file to change it), which is
               | especially useful when running multiple separate
               | instances on the same machine (like different versions of
               | PostgreSQL, or separate instances for different
               | projects), or hostnames in case I don't want to expose
               | ports.
               | 
               | I can easily have custom persistent/transient storage
               | paths or even in memory storage (tmpfs), when I have
               | persistent storage then suddenly backups become easy to
               | do and I can be very clear about all other directories
               | being wiped and being in a known state upon
               | startup/restart. It's also immensely useful for me to
               | escape the sometimes weird ways how software on *nix uses
               | the file system, I can just mount my persistent files in
               | /app/my-app/database/var/lib/postgresql/data or /app/my-
               | app/web-server/etc/apache2/sites-enabled and know that I
               | don't care about anything outside of /app.
               | 
               | I can also treat Docker as lightweight VMs, except a bit
               | more stateless, in that I can have container images that
               | I base on a version of Debian/Ubuntu/Alpine or whatever,
               | ship them, and then don't have to worry about a host OS
               | update breaking something, because only Docker or another
               | runtime like Podman is the actual dependency and most of
               | the other software on the node doesn't come in contact
               | with what I'm running. With rootless containers, that
               | also improves the separation and security there a little
               | bit.
               | 
               | With all of that in place, suddenly I can even move apps
               | and all of their data across nodes as necessary, load
               | balance software across multiple nodes, be able to easily
               | tell people how to run what I have locally and store and
               | later use these images very easily. Are there pieces of
               | software or alternatives (e.g. jails) that do a lot of
               | the same? Sure, but Docker essentially won in ease of
               | use.
        
             | btbuildem wrote:
             | For me, it's the simplicity. I don't have to care whether a
             | project is super basic, or a thorny hairball from hell.
             | Whatever it is, "docker run" is how I spin it up. It
             | doesn't infect my local. I can have three differently
             | hobbled versions of it side by side. Virtualization makes
             | it simple, conceptually - and for me that's more precious
             | than it being actually technically simple.
        
             | lolinder wrote:
             | I self-host a dozen or so different web apps locally on an
             | old PC, and containers are what makes that feasible to do
             | in my very limited spare time.
             | 
             | If I tried to run all of these directly on the hardware
             | with whatever minimal non-Docker setup each uses, I'd have
             | a dozen update processes, a dozen different ways to start
             | the server, and a dozen log files following a dozen
             | different conventions for storage. I'd also have to be sure
             | that each app I add either uses a different database and
             | language runtime than the ones I've installed already or is
             | compatible with the versions of those that I already
             | installed.
             | 
             | Instead, with Docker/Podman, I can use the same tool
             | (compose files stored in a git repo) to manage all of the
             | apps and their dependencies with zero risk of weird
             | dependency issues across app boundaries.
        
             | lnxg33k1 wrote:
             | I always keep the host clean of any language, interpreter,
             | tool, except for docker, and everything I run is ran within
             | docker, I have multiple clients with multiple level of
             | support and PHP versions needed, each project lives in its
             | container
        
             | magicalhippo wrote:
             | For me the point of using Docker is that it's a unifies
             | configuration and backups, and makes installation easier.
             | 
             | I can easily see which directories or files to back up, and
             | it's fairly explicit which knobs I've tweaked or config
             | files I've changed, regardless of what stack the app relies
             | on.
             | 
             | It's also makes it much easier to roll back a version. Just
             | take zfs snapshots of relevant directories before pulling
             | new image, if it goes south just roll back snapshots and
             | use the old image.
        
         | kioshix wrote:
         | I also use Kanboard, it's pretty decent.
        
         | muppetman wrote:
         | I didn't realise it'd moved into maintenance mode, where abouts
         | is that detailed?
        
           | kioshix wrote:
           | https://github.com/kanboard/kanboard                 This
           | application is in maintenance mode. What does it mean?
           | Citing Wikipedia:            In the world of software
           | development, maintenance mode refers to a point in a computer
           | program's life when it has reached all of its goals and is
           | generally considered to be "complete" and bug-free. The term
           | can also refer to the point in a software product's evolution
           | when it is no longer competitive with other products or
           | current with regard to the technology environment it operates
           | within.        - The author of this application is not
           | actively developing any new major features (only small fixes)
           | - New releases are published regularly depending on the
           | contributions made by the community        - Pull requests
           | for new features and bug fixes are accepted as long as the
           | guidelines are followed
        
         | colonelpopcorn wrote:
         | It's plug-in system is quite comprehensive. I just finished
         | writing a note taking plug-in and the source code itself was a
         | great reference for developing a plug-in.
        
           | raphman wrote:
           | Mind sharing a link if it is public?
        
         | vrinsd wrote:
         | Really great project, just wish nested tasks or sub-tasks was
         | easier to interact with.
        
       | lionkor wrote:
       | Ive had great success with Kanboard, but at BeamMP we use
       | plane[0], self-hosted. Apart from the lack of github integration,
       | it does the job for our small team.
       | 
       | [0]: https://plane.so/
        
         | remram wrote:
         | https://github.com/makeplane/plane, AGPL
        
       | h1fra wrote:
       | Congrats on shipping. Elegant could be removed from title though
       | @dang
        
         | zettabomb wrote:
         | It's written that way at the top of the README.
        
       | jms703 wrote:
       | Another open source project tracking alternative:
       | https://kanboard.org/
        
       | latchkey wrote:
       | I personally would like to see less Trello and more Pivotal
       | Tracker. Especially now that they've changed their pricing model.
        
       | rjzzleep wrote:
       | Even though it's not open source, just free(for very small
       | projects), I have been really liking kitemaker.co
       | 
       | I'm curious what other people think of their approach, and
       | whether that should be a model for open source kanban boards to
       | follow. It's not Trello, which is way to flexible turning work
       | items into a mess, but it's not Jira either. For me it seems to
       | nicely fit the sweet spot of structure and ease of use.
        
         | TomasEkeli wrote:
         | i love kitemaker, and they're really responsive on their slack
        
       | maayank wrote:
       | Just use taskwarrior + git
        
         | alchemist1e9 wrote:
         | I use both also but not together.
         | 
         | Can you elaborate on any synergy or connection you are
         | referring to?
        
         | LAC-Tech wrote:
         | Manually having to sync with stuff like:
         | 
         | git commit -am "update"
         | 
         | is very tedious.
        
       | sneak wrote:
       | If you are already selfhosting Gitea, it has a nice kanban-style
       | project board view that works similarly.
       | 
       | This is what I use, and find it to be pretty good. It's not as
       | good as a dedicated solution but it's one less app I have to tend
       | to, and the Gitea backups are already mega mission critical so
       | the PM stuff (and issues and wikis) get this vigilance baked in
       | for free.
        
       | liotier wrote:
       | Gitlab's kanban board is very nice, integrated with its ticketing
       | and, if you are on Gitlab, it is there already !
        
       | scubbo wrote:
       | I tried installing OpenProject on my homelab (for tracking tasks
       | related _to_ my homelab), only to find that it was missing the
       | one feature I really wanted - identifying dependencies and
       | blockers (i.e. "I can't install X until I install Y, but Y needs
       | a feature that requires an update to Z, and updating Z requires I
       | tweak config in A" - where I'm perfectly happy to manually write
       | out X/Y/Z/A as tickets myself, but I want a tool to tell me that
       | "A" is an unblocked task I can pick up). Any suggestions for a
       | tool that can do that?
        
       | ulrischa wrote:
       | Another cool tool for this is: https://kanboard.org/
        
       | __fst__ wrote:
       | If you use kanban as your personal to-do list I can recommend
       | this Obsidian plugin:
       | 
       | https://github.com/mgmeyers/obsidian-kanban
        
       | satellite2 wrote:
       | With the demo client, I don't manage to create a list on an empty
       | board on FF on Android.
        
       | coldblues wrote:
       | I'm surprised https://vikunja.io/ wasn't mentioned.
        
         | vrinsd wrote:
         | Yes! And it supports sub-tasks!
        
       | huhtenberg wrote:
       | Using the "client demo" [1] - once a new project is added and a
       | new board is added to that project, how do you add a list?
       | 
       | There seems to be just a blank canvas, basically [2].
       | 
       | [1] https://plankanban.github.io/planka
       | 
       | [2] https://i.imgur.com/6OPyn9W.png
        
       | applied_heat wrote:
       | I'm still using redmine, it doesn't look fancy but it works !
        
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       (page generated 2024-03-18 23:00 UTC)