The article mentions Vikunja as an alternative to Nextcloud Tasks, and I can give it a solid recommendation as well. I wanted a self-hosted task management app with some lightweight features for organizing tasks into projects, ideally with a kanban view, but without a full-blown PM feature set. I tried just about every task management app out there, and Vikunja was the only one that ticked all the boxes for me.
Some specific things I like about it:
* Basic todo app features are compatible with CalDAV clients like tasks.org
* Several ways of organizing tasks: subtasks, tags, projects, subprojects, and custom filters
* list, table, and kanban views
* A reasonably clean and performant frontend that isn't cluttered with stuff I don't need (i.e., not Jira)
* A REST API, which I use to export task summaries and comments to markdown files (to make them searchable along with my other plaintext notes)
* A 3rd party CLI tool: https://gitlab.com/ce72/vja
* OIDC integration (currently using it with Keycloak)
* Easily deployable with docker compose
I know this post is more about nextcloud...but can i just say this one feature from Vikunja "...export task summaries and comments..." sounds great!!! One of the features i seek out when i look for a task, project management software is the ability to easily and comprehensivelt provide for nice exports, and that said exports *include comments*!!
Either apps lack such an export, or its very minimal, or it includes lots of things, except comments...Sometimes an app might have a REST api, and I'd need to build something non-trivial to start pulling out the comments, etc. I feel like its silly in this day and age.
My desire for comments to be included in exports is for local search...but also because i use comments for sort of thinking aloud, sort of like an inline task journaling...and when comments are lacking, it sucks!
In fact, when i hear folks suggest to simply stop using such apps and merely embrace the text file todo approach, they cite their having full access to comments as a feature...and, i can't dispute their claim! But barely any non-text-based apps highlight the inclusion of comments. So, i have to ask: is it just me (who doesn't use a text-based todo workflow), and then all other folks who *do use* a text-based tdo flow, who actually care about access to comments!?!
<rant over>
Yeah, I hear you. I almost started using a purely text-based todo workflow for those same reasons, but it was hard to give up some web UI features, like easily switching between list and kanban-style views.
My use case looks roughly like this: for a given project (as in hobby/DIY/learning, not professional work), I typically have general planning/reference notes in a markdown file synced across my devices via Nextcloud. Separately, for some individual tasks I might have comments about the initial problem, stuff I researched along the way, and the solution I ended up with. Or just thinking out loud, like you mentioned. Sometimes I'll take the effort to edit that info into my main project doc, but for the way I think, it's sometimes more convenient for me to have that kind of info associated with a specific task. When referring to it later, though, it's really handy to be able to use ripgrep (or other search tools) to search everything at once.
To clarify, though, Vikunja doesn't have a built-in feature that exports all task info including comments, just a REST API. It did take a little work to pull all that info together using multiple endpoints (in this case: projects, tasks, views, comments, labels). Here's a small tool I made for that, although it's fairly specific to my own workflow: https://github.com/JWCook/scripts/tree/main/vikunja-export
> Yeah, I hear you. I almost started using a purely text-based todo workflow for those same reasons, but it was hard to give up some web UI features, like easily switching between list and kanban-style views.
Yeah, i like me some kanban! Which is one reason i've resisted the text-based workflow...so far. ;-)
> ...Vikunja doesn't have a built-in feature that exports all task info including comments, just a REST API. It did take a little work...
Aww, man, then i guess i misread. I thought it was sort of easier than that. Well, i guess that's not all bad. Its possible, but simply requires a little elbow grease. I used to use Trello which does include comments in their JSON export, but i had my own little python app to copy out and filter only the key things i wanted - like comments - and reformated to other text formats like CSV, etc. But, Trello is not open source, so its not an option for me anymore. Well, thanks for sharing (and for making!) your vikunja export tool! :-)