React-select v4.2.1 and beyond...

[ebonow]

Greetings everyone,

It's been quite a while since we've had an update so I wanted to talk a bit about how to proceed without spamming subscribers on the previous pinned post.

In full disclosure, I have reached out directly to @JedWatson about a month ago to gauge his interest in having a conversation about the future of the project and identifying ways that I could become a more effective contributor. He replied positively and am still awaiting a date/time we can discuss over Zoom. He likely has hands full with his family and other projects and I am optimistic that we will have a productive discussion when the timing is right for him.

That said, I think what keeps this project alive is the support of the community. Too much has gone into this project to let it die, let alone all the number of existing projects and application that rely on this package. I am also aware that there are still some "open source gardeners" who are actively participating to help quell the creeping tide of "issues" with generally one of two outcomes: 1) Help me fix my code or 2) React-select code/documentation needs update

Number 2 is especially frustrating as the only response available is "Yes it's broken, no ETA on a fix, and even if you fix it, no ETA on a PR". @Methuselah96 has started a fork for this reason, but I think the community is of course hesitant to splinter off onto yet another one of 3.6k forks. I would much rather exhaust all other options.

This leads me to the purpose of this post. A plan forward is better than no plan at all, and I am interested in addressing existing concerns with active community members. The hope is that we can identify a plan forward and to start by having a meaningful conversation about what the future of react-select looks like as a roadmap:

• What PR's are still relevant?
• What are the bug priorities?
• What are the feature priorities?
• What features are missing?
• What introduces breaking changes?
• Missing/broken documentation?
• Issue management
• What does a regular release cycle look like?

Perhaps @Methuselah96, @Rall3n, @bladey or others would be interested in virtually meeting up to help compile and track what's left to be done or merged. I'm open to whatever communication platform makes sense.

Also curious if anyone else had any ideas for keeping react-select moving forward. Thanks!

[bladey]

Hey @ebonow,

Thanks for reaching out, I agree with all of the above and would like to help put together a plan going forward.

Let's meet up virtually as you suggested - and we'll have that call over Zoom with @JedWatson as well once he's ready.

[Rall3n]

Interest is definitely there.

[Methuselah96]

Agreed, I am also interested in meeting and helping out in any way I can (apologies if my fork caused any tension, it just seemed like there wasn't very much movement here even after positive conversations like this).

[Methuselah96]

Would you all be interested in a Slack Workspace or a Discord Server where we can talk about steps to maintain the project? We started a Slack Workspace for immutable-js since it's in a similar situation and it has been extremely helpful.

[ebonow]

Follow up. I spoke with Thomas and Jed last night on Zoom, and there is momentum as you can see version 3.1.1 was released last night. 🎉

Highlights:

• There was a merged PR that caused some type resolution issues that Flow had missed which was holding up taking on other PRs.
• The issue was discovered, resolved, passed testing, and released.
• I was added as a collaborator to react-select.
• An issue template will be added to separate questions/help/feature requests from issues.
• Jed began an inquiry to have a discussion section added to address all things that are not issues.
• Will be adding more collaborators (hold tight)

The overall message I wanted to convey to everyone is that the plan is to get through as many PR's as possible. This will enable the move from Flow to TypeScript without invalidating the PR's that already exist.

Thank you everyone for your patience and to the existing react-select team. My goal is to at the very least keep the community in communication so that people don't feel like there is radio-silence.

That said, I am curious, if there were any high priority feature/bugs/PR's anyone is waiting on at the moment.

[ebonow]

Agreed, I am also interested in meeting and helping out in any way I can (apologies if my fork caused any tension, it just seemed like there wasn't very much movement here even after positive conversations like this).

I understand and appreciate the passion. No one wants to create extra work for themselves, so I recognize it is all in the intention of building tools together so that we can all continue to build and share. I also recognize that you first reached out requesting more contributors so for me the intention is clear that keeping the project alive is what's important.

Communication is difficult on this type of forum because it doesn't really fit as an "issue" which for me inherently makes collaboration feel strained or annoying in threads like these. Filtering out the issues from everything else and creating a space where discussions can happen should help tremendously (which are efforts currently underway). Jed expressed a desire to have the community more involved moving forward in a way that doesn't bloat or break the tools, so these new processes should enable that.

[Methuselah96]

@ebonow This is amazing news, thank you so much for your persistence!

It would be great to have a place where contributors (and anyone else interested) can hop on and message each other so we don't have to clog up these issues unnecessarily. Any thoughts on a Slack/Discord/Gitter?

P.S. Thanks for your understanding, even though I could've handled the situation better.

[ebonow]

@ebonow This is amazing news, thank you so much for your persistence!

It would be great to have a place where contributors (and anyone else interested) can hop on and message each other so we don't have to clog up these issues unnecessarily. Any thoughts on a Slack/Discord/Gitter?

P.S. Thanks for your understanding, even though I could've handled the situation better.

All good on my end. Github "Discussions" is a feature currently in beta that some repos already have enabled. Having communication consolidated in Discussions would allow more visibility and would likely solve a lot of problems at once (ie: sections for Help, Show and Tell, Feature Requests, etc...) so fingers crossed 🤞.

[Methuselah96]

Yeah, "Discussions" would be awesome for many reasons. I still think it can still helpful to have instant messaging for certain conversations. I've started a Slack that anyone can join. @ebonow Feel free to hop on, it'd be great to pick your brain on some things without cluttering up everyone's inbox.

[cseas]

Can we please have @Methuselah96 added as a collaborator as well? I think he's done tremendous work in maintaining his fork and @types/react-select and is extremely active in responding to Issues and PRs.

Coming from someone who's using react-select in multiple TypeScript projects, I can tell using the library with TypeScript is very much a headache (refer #4308 which will break many pipelines) and could do with a lot of improvement and could use people who're well acquainted with TypeScript.

[ebonow]

Greetings everyone,

I wanted to share some news with everyone to let everyone know where things are at with ongoing development. @Methuselah96 , @bladey , @JedWatson , and myself have had several meetings with @Rall3n being active in chat an PR reviews/comments.

Preparations are being made to release react-select-v3.2 AND react-select-v4.0.0
The premise is as follows: There are some known bugs and deficiencies that are impacting the current version of react-select. One of the most obvious and visible at the moment are the errors and warnings appearing when using current versions of React.

While we have what seems to be equivalent lifecycles methods in place, replacing class methods with static methods can have negative consequences on performance in different situations. We simply are not sure what those might be without more usage and testing. Therefore, to be overly protective of our users who are using this in production environments, we are erring on the side of caution and moving forward with these changes as a major release.
However, it would also be irresponsible to simply leave users with the risk of updating to a new major version when the existing version has other known deficiencies. Therefore, we will be putting together at least one (and possibly more) minor release to address these.

Back-porting future features will likely happen if it is warranted, but in some cases, it might involve a breaking change or would add extra complexity when time instead could be invested in other milestones we have identified.

What are those milestones? Tentatively we are looking at the following (subject to change)...

• v4 - React17 peer dependency support
• v5 - Move to TypeScript
• v6 - Move to hooks

Version 6 will likely be a sweet spot for most users as we are planning to allow for more composability and flexibility. Expect a smaller package, with better performance, and more powerful subscriber methods to support your custom components or those created from others in the community. Each major version also represents a risk/opportunity to introduce new breaking changes so keep in mind these version numbers could change as new breaking functionality could be deemed necessary.

It should also be noted that we haven't lost sight of other "need to haves" such as required validation and a11y usability (among others as well) and are actively looking for ways that these can be solved for every combination of functionality including single, multi, async, createable and is not searchable. There are other existing issues as well that we're aware of and will continue to support our users as much as possible through these growing pains.

These changes will also likely move us closer to needing new documentation so please be patient with this as well as it's on the way.

I also encourage you all to use the Discussions area for questions, feature requests, sharing cool stuff you built in "show and tell", or offering ideas about how to make react-select easier for developers. This makes it easier for users to identify known bugs and for us all to fix them.

I appreciate everyone's patience. The team has momentum and expect some release notes accompanying shiny new releases coming soon.