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I wonder how to go about to collaborate to the OSM ecosystem with code. Does anyone know what are the cool projects within OSM in C/C++? (i.e. not web stuff)

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Take a look at Tippecanoe, which is under active development again[0]. The original developer, Erica Fischer (who is wonderful to work with), has a fork[1] where new work is happening.

[0] https://felt.com/blog/erica-fischer-tippecanoe-at-felt

[1] https://github.com/felt/tippecanoe

Woohoo! This is fantastic news

(Co-founder of Felt here) Thanks for the kind words! We are lucky to have Erica on our team. If you ever want to talk maps, my email is can@felt dot com!

Thank you!

The biggest help one can probably be to the project is to create or improve user-facing software. OsmAnd is still clunky and ugly to the average person coming from FAANG Maps, for example. The iOS version is even worse. Some alternative apps exist with better UX, but they're often missing features. There are also some web projects out there that aim to be a google maps website replacement, but none of them are quite there.

It could also be a niche thing, like if you make an app that shows the nearest defibrillator or other emergency facilities that people might need in a pinch. Any area gaining good coverage of this type of data would immediately have an app to turn to. With adoption also comes the influx of new contributors.

Try Organic Maps (fork of maps.me): https://organicmaps.app/

It of course lacks many features of OsmAnd, but you can't have both. UI issues of OsmAnd come from its features.

That's one of the ones I had in mind when writing my comment. Thanks for the hint, though :)

Not necessarily cool perhaps but a critical piece of OSM infrastructure is osm2pgsql[1].

Also important tools in OSM land are osmium[2] and imposm[3] but the latter I think is Go not C++.

[1] https://osm2pgsql.org/ [2] https://osmcode.org/osmium-tool/ [3] https://imposm.org/

osm2pgsql makes it surprisingly easy to spin up your own tile server using OSM extracts

which recipe(s) do you like?

Here you go: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Category:C%2B%2B

Yep, I got there like 1 minute after asking this FAQ. Thanks.

There's lots of mentions of Maps.ME, which is no longer open source. The spiritual successor is called Organic Maps

I use Maps.me as my main map and navigation app as I don't like that Google knows where I go, and I can say that it's a very good alternative to Google Maps. However I have to say that now I'm a little worried because it's Russian-owned. Happy to know that there's an open-source alternative.

OsmAnd

Important clarification: OsmAnd~, installed from F-Droid. Do not install OsmAnd straight from the default app store.

Or do, if you want to monetarily support the developers in a convenient way.

If by “support” you mean “get nagged about the ‘pro’ version incessantly”.

By support they meant buying Pro version.

I did not have any nagging im the version I bought.

There is an open source fork of maps.me maintained by original authors, who are not russian: https://organicmaps.app/

Two C++ projects I’m involved in that you might enjoy:

https://github.com/systemed/tilemaker

https://github.com/Project-OSRM/osrm-backend

The most accessible general-purpose map app for end users (Android and iOS) is written in C/C++. This is pretty high on the cool and useful scale: https://organicmaps.app/

Both map renderers Tangram-ES and Maplibre-GL - https://github.com/tangrams/tangram-es and - https://github.com/maplibre/maplibre-gl-native are also written in C/C++.

Finally, most routing software, such as OSRM or Valhalla are written in C/C++.

I find mapy.cz to be smoother. Not sure what its written in though as its not open source.

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.seznam.mapy...

iOS: https://apps.apple.com/cz/app/mapy-cz/id411411020

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