dart_apitool goes bmw-tech
Today I have some exciting news to share!
Dart_apitool has been transferred to bmw-tech. The repository as well as the package on pub.dev are now under control of the BMW open source organization.
“Why?” You may ask
There are two major reasons for that move:
1. The need arose at BMW
Dart_apitool has been born out of a need in the “My BMW” development organization. The need for a tool that automatically can check correct semantic versioning of packages to avoid creating a mess when modularizing the app.
Puzzled by the realization that no such tool existed I took this as a challenge and made the development of dart_apitool my evening pet project.
2. BMW is the only user that I’m aware of
Besides not getting much traction in the Flutter community dart_apitool is used internally at BMW and already got some contributions from BMW colleagues.
I’m not sure why there is a lack of community traction. I can imagine those reasons:
Flutter developers out there have semver under control and there is simply no need for such a tool
Flutter developers are not aware that they need dart_apitool
Should you trust a “random dude” from the internet?
Introducing a dependency to a tool from a “random dude from the internet” is something you don’t do light-hearted. What if this dude publishes a breaking update? You don’t want your CI pipeline to fail because of that.
From my experience I can say that there are at least 3 packages out there that would have avoided releasing a minor update with breaking changes in the last half a year if they had used dart_apitool 😉.
So I assume it is a combination of lack of awareness and trusting a “random dude”.
The latter part is fixed by having BMW backing this tool and showing commitment. I know that we already depend on it as we are using it internally, so you can be sure that some BMW dev will make it work again once it breaks but having dart_apitool being an official part of the BMW open source organization is emphasizing on that.
Regarding awareness: I will continue to toot the horn for semver hygiene as I think this is a crucial puzzle piece to a healthy ecosystem. Even if you think you have it under control it can not hurt to have a safety net in place that helps you to achieve your goal.
What’s next
Operationally nothing will change.
Maybe you will see more BMW folks working on dart_apitool depending on the demand.
I’m happy that BMW made this possible, and I’m looking forward to the future of dart_apitool.