[Announce] : New project HawkbitGUI

[Stefano Babic]

Hi everybody,

there is a new project related to OTA update. This is related to Hawkbit
and it is thought to fix and help with the access to the server from an
operator.

As announced in Hawkbit's issue #1376
(https://github.com/eclipse-hawkbit/hawkbit/issues/1376), Hawkbit uses
for the GUI the Vaadin Framework. Vaadin introduced a new release that
creates incompatibility with the past, and the GUI was first completely
removed. Hawkbit's developers themselves encouraged the development of a
new GUI independent from the Hawkbit server, as the GUI is more or less
an add-on to the server. On the other side, Hawkbit is improving the
REST-API.

As it can be read from the issue, there wasn't a solution, and the GUI
was first dropped from the server. Meanwhile, Hawkbit's developers are
implementing a new "simple GUI" (as they call), that it is more thought
to show the features of the Hawkbit Server. This is still implemented as
part of the Hawkbit Server using the new Release of Vaadin Framework, so
that a full-blown independence from the main development (the server) is
not reached.

Even if there are alternatives to the Hawkbit Server, Hawkbit is used
with many instances of SWUpdate. The result was that an older version of
the Hawkbit Server (< 0.4) was often taken due to the missing GUI, and
that forbids to close security leaks by updating the server itself. So
it is not a solution at all.

I have started with my company the development of a new GUI for the
Hawkbit Server, and with these goals:

- remove dependencies from the Hawkbit Server. It is a separate project,
built outside Hawkbit's Java environment, and it just uses the REST API
(Management Interface) provided by Hawkbit.

- GUI and server do not need to run on the same server. GUI can be
configured with which server must be connected. You can have multiple
GUIs running at the same time.

- built on top of current Web Framework (next, nodejs,..)

- design easier to change, even if it currently resembles the previous
GUI, to get a better UX

And of course, this project is released as Open Source. You can take it
a chance and its sources are available at:

https://github.com/sbabic/hawkbitgui

And this will be treated of course like any other Open Source project.
Contributions are welcome, as well as companies interested to extend its
functionalities.

Best regards,
Stefano Babic