End of support for Vite/Svelte and Astro. #721
Replies: 3 comments 11 replies
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Just as an FYI, I'm using SvelteKit w/Capacitor in SPA only mode and it seems to be working fine (more or less). I've also used Astro and Tailwind to build a blog and TBH the Svelte usage there is really just to add a bit of pop - as soon as it turns into SPA-like routing thing I'd probably start with SvelteKit as a base instead. +1 |
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Omg, I saw a push in the morning and at first I thought that there would be no svelte support at all. Wow, that was very scary. |
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Hi. I'm willing to use the old versions, or deal with the hassle of losing support, because I would rather have Skeleton in my project than not. It's the best fit of components for my Astro app. Is there anywhere I can find help or instructions for installing it? (V2 preffered) |
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Hey everyone, I wanted to take a moment to provide a detailed explanation for this change. We hope this sheds some light on our reasons and decision not to move forward with these frameworks. Please be aware the goal will be to put our full focus on SvelteKit going forward, as we feel this provides the best experience for users going forward.
The Impact on Components
When Skeleton was open sourced in August the goal was to support it everywhere Svelte was available. We were almost immediately alerted to the fact Skeleton wasn't working as expected for Vite/Svelte and Astro projects. We immediately opted to change several components and features to facilitate these frameworks.
One example was our LightSwitch component, which is used toggle the preferred light/dark mode for themes. It wasn't supported in these frameworks due to the fact were using a SvelteKit-only
browser
environment context to conditionally check when LocalStorage became available. Because of this we opted for Svelte'sonMount
lifecycle hook. While it made the feature "universal", it came with a noticeable impact on speed. In fact, you may may still notice a quick "flash" on page load due to this - which we aim to address in the near future.Reviewing Audience Usage
As the Skeleton community continues to grown, we've been able to poll you (our audience) and get a rough estimate of the usage per each framework. Here's the results from around a month ago:
While Vite/Svelte and Astro are represented here, you'll note the numbers are VERY small. Including 0% for Astro on Twitter.
The Launch of SvelteKit v1.0
You may also be aware that SvelteKit v1.0 launched this week. It's been noted in the community that Svelte seems to be taking a step away from Vite/Svelte. If you view the Svelte homepage you'll see the CLI install commands now use the same "create svelte" tool which creates a SvelteKit app:
From what we're hearing, the goal is to make SvelteKit the "de facto" option, even for folks using Svelte in embedded solutions like browser extensions or web-based desktop stacks like Tauri and Electron. While out of our control, we are hopeful this becomes the case.
The Cost of Support
If you're not aware, we actually maintain unique onboarding instructions for Vite and Astro users, dedicated tutorials, and cross test per each major feature or change. We also provide free and voluntary support between GitHub and Discord for these frameworks. But there's no getting around it, the core team of Skeleton maintainers is small. Primarily made up of myself, @niktek, @Sarenor, and @luke-hagar-sp. With my recent appearance on Svelte Sirens we've seen a big influx of new users and an even larger number of new support tickets. While we love helping everyone, it does come at the cost of our development time. Therefore a balance must be struck.
Removing Support
Giving the information above, we've made the call to drop support for Vite/Svelte and Astro in the coming release. This is not a decision we've reached lightly, as you can see we've been polling and reviewing information for weeks now. But honestly the numbers just aren't there to justify continued support. That said, it's worth noting that a portion of Skeleton features, such as Tailwind Elements, will continue to work fine for these frameworks. If you're looking purely for style and theme solutions then you most likely can continue to use these without issue.
What Comes Next
The first order of business will be to update and simplify the onboarding documentation and go all-in on SvelteKit and our CLI. We feel this provides the best solution for most. We can continue to improve the CLI while also starting the process of updating features to support optimal solutions for the majority of our users.
If you have any questions or feedback regarding this change, please reach out in the comment section below this post. We would be glad to hear from you.
Thanks for your time!
Chris
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