We started roughly a month before Christmas 2020 to consider “re-platforming” our mobile app from Xamarin Forms to Flutter. I thought it might be relevant for other teams out there to see what we did and learn from our expreince.
First things first
Let me provide you a bit of context about our apps, users and the related business behind it.
I’m the team leader of a development team working in the marine industry (specialized on super yachts 60m and upwards), our customers are the crew of these vessels. We provide a web based solution that is installed on board and/or on our infrastructure, depending on the project both might be the case including a replication of the data from the offline (onboard) to the online system. Our software supports the crew in their daily business of running the vessel:
- Maintaining equipment
- Purchasing consumables and spares
- Safety management (insurances, certificates, safety procedures etc)
Our mobile app has to do the same plus it must be offline first. Offline first is the top priority for our customers. Imagine you are performing a daily round running around the vessel deck by deck, and you lose your network connection multiple times… You would not be happy ;)
To connect the app with our server side…
