I've been thinking about this for a while and I think it would be very nice to have an automated way of populating the crates, instead of manually adding each of them.

The AeroRust Website

We can integrate www.areweinspaceyet.org as part of the AeroRust website (e.g. like a menu item) and populate the crates using the crates.io Categories - categories.toml using the same design.

Rust re-write

Instead of the Ruby app we can rewrite the server using Rust.
It will be easier to collect, parse and serve the website and easier to maintain as no Ruby knowledge will be required.

Tasks:

• We need the same information that the Ruby script currently generates
• Build the crates list using a list of categories to be included
• Whitelist & Blacklist for crates that are missing or wrongly categorized
• Decide if we should use a database dump (with https://crates.io/crates/db-dump) or crates.io. API (https://crates.io/crates/crates_io_api)

You can see an example binary for collecting the crates' information by categories from crates.io here

✔️ More categories on crates.io

We can ask in the crates.io repository how we can extend the categories that can be used for crates.
This will allow us the collect these crates from the registry and show them on www.areweinspaceyet.org

Currently, these categories exist, which are very insufficient for our needs:

• [science]
• [science.categories.robotics]
• [simulation]
• [network-programming]

There should be categories related to Aerospace and simulations related to aerospace, so it might be possible to create categories like:

• [aerospace]
• [aerospace.categories.space-protocols]
• [aerospace.categories.drones]
• [aerospace.categories.unmanned-aerial-vehicles]
• [aerospace.categories.simulation]
• [aerospace.categories.protocols]
• etc.

We have a to-do to add 2 other categories.

This issue aims to:

• Add a Simulation category - we have at least 1 project listed in #6 that is in this category.
  -[ ] Discuss whether we need to add Mission planning and which crates should go inside

Suggest new categories commenting or mentioning this issue in your PR

We need content to put on the website explaining basic things and answering some questions for newcomers.

Here's a list of things we can include:

• What is the AeroRust community? #10
• Who is it for? Who can participate? (ofc, everyone, no matter their experience)
• How to join
• How to contribute
• What are the benefits of Rust? - interoperability, memory safety, etc. with articles backing these claims
• Has Rust been to space? (short answer: Yes) Some projects that publicly disclosed this information (CUAVA-1 cubesat is one example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k452kSisfcc&t=72s&ab_channel=AeroRust ) #10

Things to consider:

• Should we make part of this context as blog posts as well?

Proposal:

Build a website

Objectives:

• Promote the working group
• Simplify the first contact with external entities and industry actors
• Maintain a consistent image for the outside world

The 3 years anniversary is coming (1.1.2023) and we want to prepare the first community blog post about it, now that we have a new website which includes and share what has happened in the past 3 years.

What would the blog post be about?

All the community work that has happened in the past 3 years.
The growth of the members and a Call for contributors (content creators, community managers, project managers)

What topics will it cover?

• Crates and other projects we've been involved in
• Talks, meetups and participation in conferences
• Videos

For whom it is?

Everyone, from newcomers to community members.

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
We should be able to show more than just a link to a resource to another website, video, etc.

Describe the solution you'd like
A shortcode that uses fetched data (using load_data) from a website and show it statically on a blog post (shortcode) or other page of the website (macro)

Tools:

• https://metatags.io
• https://www.getzola.org/documentation/content/shortcodes/
• https://www.getzola.org/documentation/templates/overview/#load-data

You can participate in #hacktoberfest by adding any crate to the areweinspaceyet.org list

List of crates to be added

• sgp4 (astrodynamics) #12
• tello (sdk)
• tletools (parser, astrodynamics)
• tle-parser (parser, astrodynamics)
• reed-solomon-erasure (error correction)
• reed-solomon (error correction)
• adafruit_gps
• https://github.com/cubehub/doppler (doppler correction)
• https://github.com/cubehub/demod (demodulation)
• https://crates.io/crates/simconnect-sdk (SDK, simulations)
• https://github.com/mihai-dinculescu/msfs-2020-gps-link (SDK, simulation)

Resource suggestions for crates

• Astronomy crates from https://github.com/rust-unofficial/awesome-rust#astronomy
• Industrial automation from https://github.com/rust-unofficial/awesome-rust#industrial-automation
• Simulation from https://github.com/rust-unofficial/awesome-rust#simulation

The configuration file for the categories and crates found on the website can be found in scraper/config.toml.
To add a crate to the catalogue, you should know that there are 2 types of categories - crates.io categories and our own custom categories:

• Our custom categories - these are the categories that don't have an analogue category in crates.io. You can find those in the scraper/config.toml configuration file which do not include the canonical_slug key (which is the crates.io category slug).
• crates.io categories found here - those categories have the canonical_slug key found in the scraper/config.toml configuration file. For example https://crates.io/categories/aerospace::protocols has canonical_slug = "aerospace::protocols"

How to contribute

• The category in which the crate should be placed must be part of the categories found in scraper/config.toml configuration.
• If the category is not present in the configuration file scraper/config.toml, you can propose this category be added.
• If the crate should be added to one of the categories from crates.io categories found here you should open a PR in the crate's repo itself to include the given category in the Cargo.toml categories section.

Do you have other suggestions? Feel free to add any crate related to the aerospace Rust ecosystem for #Hacktoberfest

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
After looking on the website, it currently appears that crates in the various category registries are listed in alphabetical order. This makes it more difficult to find crates that are de-facto standards in the community, and may have larger communities or user/contributor bases.

Describe the solution you'd like
Display crates using an alternative metric, perhaps such as based on a weighted combination of total vs. recent downloads.

Additional context
This is how Are We Learning Yet currently lists its crates, and I think it has proved advantageous for new users interested in finding libraries to use.