Yarn’s roadmap for v2 and beyond: What to expect going forward

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  • January 29, 2019
Technology

Since its start in 2016, Yarn has unraveled its way across the JavaScript scene. Now, with the beginning of 2019, they’ve announced a new roadmap and where the project hopes to go from here.

Yarn is a fast, reliable, and secure dependency management for JavaScript. Not only is the logo adorable, but Yarn comes packed with a lot of features including offline mode, flat mode, and network resiliency. (If you need a quick cheer up, look at the art on Yarn’s website, done by an internet famous Redditor.)

Let’s explore what the roadmap is dangling in front of us and what to expect in the coming year.

SEE ALSO: RE:DOM is a tiny JavaScript library with a huge personality

The long, winding road

What does the new roadmap entail?

Some of the new changes for v2 (nicknamed Berry) include:

  • Overhauled log system with unique diagnostic error codes
  • Lockfile and configuration format will become a strict subset of YAML
  • Added support for plugins, including new commands
  • Cache format will switch from Tar to Zip
  • Yarn v2 will become an API. Internal components will be split into modular entities.
  • Dropped Node 4 and Node 6 support
  • Nested workspaces supported out of the box
  • Fully atomic cache – run multiple Yarn instances on the same cache
  • Various bug fixes

These 2019 goals will make Yarn a development-first tool. This means more Plug’n’Play characteristics.

From Flow to TypeScript

One of the most notable changes Yarn will make is switching its codebase from Flow to TypeScript.

Flow is a static type checker for JavaScript code. One of its key claims to fame is that it maintains the same feel of coding with JavaScript, so for JS users it is easy to pick up and execute. It was created by Facebook and released back in 2014. Yarn’s reasoning given in the roadmap maintains that the change comes from a community-focused mindset:

Yarn is currently fully covered by Flow types, and to be honest it works pretty well for us – the key part being “us”. Because we want to make it as easy as possible for third-party contributors to shim in and help us maintain this awesome tool, we’ll switch the codebase to TypeScript. We hope this will help making the codebase feel more familiar than the projects your already contribute to.

This mentality goes hand in hand with Yarn’s philosophy of “Developing JavaScript projects should be easy”. However, does this switch predict a trend happening with users switching from Flow from TypeScript? Even another Facebook project, Jest, has made the migration from Flow to TypeScript in December, 2018.

Is Microsoft’s TypeScript quickly becoming the new standard, and if so, what will this mean for developers?

Ready for change?

SEE ALSO: Pluralsight 2018 wrap-up: JavaScript reigns supreme, Dart gains momentum

So, when do these big changes arrive?

For now, v2 will expect to hit the scene in early February with a new open repository. However, a stable release won’t happen until summer 2019, so you still have plenty of time with your current version.

How do you feel about the new changes? Will they overhaul Yarn for the better?

The post Yarn’s roadmap for v2 and beyond: What to expect going forward appeared first on JAXenter.

Source : JAXenter

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