GSoC 2025 : Replacing OpenMRS Standalone with a Modern, User-Friendly Alternative
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Project title: Replacing OpenMRS Standalone with a Modern, User-Friendly Alternative
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Primary mentor: @dkayiwa
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Backup mentor: @wikumc
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project link: GSoC 2025: Replacing OpenMRS Standalone with a Modern, User-Friendly Alternative
Overview
Replace the Standalone with something else. Very old, can’t even build in our latest releases - we disable it as the technology no longer works and is no longer supported. We now just ship the .war file and README. Suggestion to leverage Docker - something that works by double clicking and then just runs.
We never intended to use the OpenMRS Standalone version in production. But it turned out to be used in a number of places because they found it easier to use for sites that did not have support staff with advanced IT skills. We are also seeing an increasing number of people in our community who do not have lots of computer skills and just want something to download, click and run for their hospitals.
Objectives
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Replace the legacy Standalone with a modern, double-click runnable distribution that is simple for non-technical users to install and run.
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Ensure cross-platform compatibility, including support for Apple Silicon (M1/M2) and modern Java (Java 17+).
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Adopt MariaDB4j as the embedded database engine, replacing MySQL.
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Support OpenMRS Core 2.7.0+ and provide standalone distributions for OpenMRS 2.x, 3.x, and Core Platform (2.7.x, 2.8.x).
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Automate builds with CI pipelines to generate and publish artifacts for each supported distribution.
Contribution
Github repository that I worked on,
Issues and PRs
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JIRA Epic ticket : STAND-110
Weekly Blog Posts
GSOC 2025 Week 5: RefApp 2.x Lands Safely on Standalone
GSoC 2025 Week 6: RefApp 3.x Arrives — and a Platform 2.8.0 Glitch from the Stars
GSoC 2025 Week 07 — Fixing Windows Compatibility and Midterm Reflection
GSoC 2025 Week 09: Shifting Focus to 3.x and Crushing Critical ErrorsResources
Final Presentation
Talk Thread
Project update thread : GSOC 2025: Replacing OpenMRS Standalone with a Modern, User-Friendly Alternative - Updates and Discussion
Final evaluation report: GSoC 2025: Replacing OpenMRS Standalone with a Modern, User-Friendly Alternative — Final Evaluation | by Muta-jonathan | Aug, 2025 | Medium
Proposal
Google Doc Link of this Proposal: Mutagubya Jonathan OpenMRS GSOC Program 2025 - Google Docs
Future Works
Looking ahead on this project i see alot of things we can improve and work on. For now we still have a small work to do on the 2.x refApp which is on branch openmrs-emr2 which needs to add support for demo data and windows capability support.
In the UI aspects i see potential to further improve it and mimic the new 2.8.0 Installion for openmrs style developed by @mherman22 instead of using the following html style
Also thinking of bringing more contributors on board to further improve features, Speed on startups like when importing sql dumps in 3.x.
Thoughts On GSoC
GSoC 2025 has truly been a life-changing journey for me. I thank God for the wisdom and strength He has given me throughout this experience. I’m especially grateful to my mentors, @wikumc and @dkayiwa , for walking with me through challenges and constantly pushing me to grow as a developer. A big shout-out to @jayasanka for the gentle reminders about blog posts that kept us consistent, also @ruhanga, @mherman22, @raff, @ibacher and to the amazing OpenMRS community for the encouragement and teamwork that made this journey even more meaningful. Looking ahead, I’m excited to keep giving back and contributing to open-source projects while carrying forward all the lessons I’ve learned.