SvelteUI 1.0: A Complete Rewrite for Svelte 5

Brisklemonade commented 3 months ago

Dear SvelteUI users,

We're thrilled to announce that we're undertaking a complete rewrite of the SvelteUI library to take full advantage of the new features and improvements coming in Svelte 5 (in addition to the deprecation of our core styling engine). This decision wasn't taken lightly, but we believe it's necessary to ensure SvelteUI remains a robust, high-performance, and future-proof solution for building modern Svelte applications.

Why a Rewrite?

Svelte 5 introduces significant changes to the framework's architecture and API, some of which address long-standing issues and limitations that SvelteUI has faced. By rewriting the library from the ground up, we can:

Leverage the performance improvements and optimizations in Svelte 5, resulting in even faster rendering and better overall application performance.
Restructure the codebase to align with Svelte's reactive principles and best practices, improving code organization, readability, and maintainability.
Simplify the library's internals, making it easier to understand, extend, and maintain in the long run, ensuring a more sustainable future for SvelteUI.
Provide a more idiomatic and "Svelte-like" API, seamlessly integrating with Svelte's design principles and enhancing the overall developer experience (DX).
Optimize the library's bundle size and tree-shaking capabilities, resulting in smaller application payloads, faster load, and build times.

What This Means for Users

During the rewrite process, the current beta version of SvelteUI (0.15.3) will continue to be maintained and supported. However, new features and enhancements will be focused on the upcoming 1.0.0 release.

We understand that a major version upgrade can be disruptive, but we're committed to making the transition as smooth as possible. As part of the 1.0.0 release, we'll provide comprehensive migration guides and documentation, as well as full support in the discord community

Timeline and Next Steps

We're currently in the alpha phase of SvelteUI 1.0, with a stable release planned for Q4 2024. If you'd like to get an early look at the new version and provide feedback, please check out the beta / preview branch.

Note that the preview branch is not available yet as we are still in alpha

We'll be sharing regular updates on the rewrite progress, as well as sneak peeks of new features and improvements, through our communication channels (e.g. GitHub Discussions, Reddit, Discord, etc.). Stay tuned!

Thank you for your continued support and patience as we work to make SvelteUI even better. We're excited about the future of Svelte and can't wait to share what we've been cooking up.

Let us know if you have any questions or concerns!

The SvelteUI Team 💙