(for inspiration, the open bugs are listed at http://deb.li/debsrcbugs)
Enabling Debsources to work on mobile browsers, via an hybrid (desktop/mobile) design, is an interesting and useful challenge. A library such as Bootstrap should be used. Additionally, the interface could be more dynamic, using ajax requests, and libraries such as jQuery and Angular. An SPA (single page application) would be very handy, keeping in mind compatibility with text-based javascriptless browsers is needed.
On a second level, a native app could be developed, leveraging some new possibilities (saving files, editing them and producing patches (like with the browser extension), etc). There is a design challenge involved here, and also a technology choice (e.g. Cordova/PhoneGap vs. real native).
Support of security.debian.org, and other operating systems, poses few challenges:
- refactoring (adding a table for the different archives, changing primary keys, lots of UI changes, etc).
- support of the updates coming from different archives through different protocols.
- disk size: implement deduplication, at either block or file level
(see btrfs, mongodb/gridfs), or by hand through the files table and
its checksums. This can be done:
- through hard links at update time
- through hard links via a cronjob (involving race conditions and similar challenges).
In the files table, we currently only compute the sha256 sum. It would be interesting to have other checksums.
Raphael Geissert has developed a Firefox/Chrome plugin to allow the edition of a file directly in Debsources, and to generate a patch ready to be sent to the maintainer of the modified package. See http://rgeissert.blogspot.fr/2015/08/updates-to-sourcesdebiannet-editor.html It would be awesome to:
- integrate it in Debsources' code base, so that users don't require to install the browser extension,
- and improve it to support e.g. multi-file editing (that needs session management) and/or other features.