Is this project actually abandoned?

[michaellee8]

I can see that the author did not accept pull request to fix the Gradle crashes, and the Github repo hasn't been updated for about a half year.
I have just saw/wrote some alternatives here:

1. https://github.com/alann-maulana/flutter_beacon Just googled this, going to pull it and check if this will work.
2. https://github.com/michaellee8/flutter_blue_beacon Spinned up my own library wrapping flutter_blue. Scanning iBeacon in iOS is not going to work therefore, since Apple require native scanning for iBeacon. No support to background scanning right now.

[yveswehrli]

@michaellee8 Im also searching for an alternative. Have you found a good package?

[michaellee8]

@yveswehrli I have searched hard but right now only the above 2 exists. Actually this one is the best through.

[yveswehrli]

@michaellee8 Thanks for your help 👍

[duncanhoggan]

I've made the relevant changes to support AndroidX and Kotlin 1.3 here

If the maintainer comes back online then we can pull it in.

[michaellee8]

@duncanhoggan your contribution seems really great, maybe we will have to start consider forking this project to an organization.

[vinceramcesoliveros]

it's almost a year since beacons weren't updated by the author. I think this should be archived. create another package as an organization to maintain any updates to the native realm(android & iOS).

[awazgyawali]

I am heavily using this on my flutter apps, let's move it to an organization. I can help a lot in native android side.

[awazgyawali]

Created a request here, https://github.com/fluttercommunity/community/issues/21

Please upvote the issue.

[ThinkDigitalSoftware]

Keep it active so it'll get merged

[deanriverson]

It seems this project is well and truly abandoned since we've gone 6 more months with no activity. Is anyone in this thread still interested in maintaining a beacon plugin for Flutter?

I'd love to hear from @lukaspili since he seems to still be active in other Loup projects like streams_channel. Lukas are you willing to turn this plugin over to someone else so it can be maintained?

How about @awazgyawali and @duncanhoggan? Are you guys still interested in this plugin and willing to help maintain it?

Beacons are not one of my life passions, but I think they're interesting and I do have a work project right now that is using them. So I'm willing to spend some time to get this plugin updated with current dependencies, figure out a new home for it (if possible), and put a little time into maintaining it going forward (at least for the time being).

I have zero experience in publishing Flutter plugins, but I'm willing to learn and would love some help. Anyone else?

[awazgyawali]

I have been tweaking and configuring this project on my fork to fill my requirements. I initially planned to merge my changes here but sadly, the maintainer was not active thus didn't get a chance to merge them. Currently, my fork has gone way too far and has been tweaked to fit my organizational needs.

But I can help with the project if we are again planning to refactor or to maintain this. Let's get posted here.

[deanriverson]

@awazgyawali Thanks for the reply. Are your changes to the plugin not generally useful then? Has this plugin worked for you otherwise? Or are there some important bug fixes that you have done to it on your fork?

I've had some success with the flutter_beacon plugin, but have also seen some crashes. This one seems to support background monitoring, whereas after a quick search I don't see anything dealing with that in the code or docs of flutter_beacon.

As was mentioned on the issue you opened on the community site, it would be best if there was one great plugin rather than several good ones.

So it seems the first step is determining a starting point. There seems to be a lot of good code in this plugin. On the other hand, flutter_beacon does seem to be maintained and there's a good chance that the maintainer would welcome the help.

[lukaspili]

Hello, As @awazgyawali said, his fork is too different and too specific to be merged here. We plan to restart support for beacons in the near future, but our other libraries have a higher priority right now, so I'm not sure about the timeline for beacons.

I'm open to include additional contributors and/or merge this effort with something else. Let me know, and sorry for keeping you all in the dark for so long.

[deanriverson]

@lukaspili It's great to hear that you're planning to continue support for this plugin! That would be the best outcome by far.

I guess the main question is how can we help? It seems like the highest priority would be to merge in some of the PRs for build issues and get a new version published.

I'm sure there are others who are willing to help, and I'm dealing with a Flutter beacon project right now. So I'm highly motivated. :-)

What level of assistance would you be comfortable with?

[duncanhoggan]

@deanriverson Happy to assist with maintenance. I ended up writing my own version from scratch. I needed a lib just to do beacon scanning and ranging for iBeacon and Eddystone. Its deployed and working quite nicely.

I agree that having a lib specifically for beacon interaction is really nice. We gotta make sure from the outset that the area of responsibility/feature set is clearly defined.

I'm sure there are others who are willing to help, and I'm dealing with a Flutter beacon project right now. So I'm highly motivated. :-)

🤣

[deanriverson]

Thanks @duncanhoggan. Does your version support background monitoring? I didn't see the source on your GitHub, but I'd love to read through it if it's available somewhere.

@lukaspili It looks like we have a lot of experience and willingness to help in this thread. We just need a plan and some permissions. Would you be willing to appoint some contributors with permissions to approve PR requests? Or would you prefer something else be done?