We were all expecting to see a fresh new LTS stamped Vaadin 14 release at the beginning of the summer. The project was a bit late due to the documentation, but we thought we could catch up. At the same time, we started to spot some issues with the new npm based tooling that affects the developer experience and we are still fiddling with those.
We also decided we’ll postpone the Vaadin 15 release to December, when we originally planned to ship Vaadin 16. There wouldn’t be too much to deliver in September as Vaadin 14 is already late and the holiday season kicks in. During the autumn we are going to make alpha and beta releases of Vaadin 15 and backport certain features to Vaadin 14 series.
All but npm looks green
Vaadin 14 is not only about npm based client bundling. Drag and drop, Menu Bar, responsive side menu for App Layout and a bunch of other long-awaited features are also included. If you are in a hurry to use those, it is safe to start using those in production builds in “compatibility mode” aka “Bower” mode.
A build using compatibility mode works just as it worked in Vaadin 10-13 and you get almost all new features we are delivering in Vaadin 14. You will need the npm based build only for Polymer 3 based templates and to integrate some of the latest Web Components.
What is missing for npm and the official release?
The largest issues with npm mode are in the development cycle (development builds have been slow) and in the way projects behave when you update dependencies in your pom.xml. The latest Vaadin 14.0.0.rc3 fixed many of these issues, but we are still going to fix at least an issue with the dark variation of the Lumo theme.
We want to get the final Vaadin 14 release out ASAP, but without compromising the developer experience.
All help appreciated!
We have received a lot of feedback for the new changes already, but we are always eager to hear more. Especially feedback on the new npm build and the oddities when trying that, should be reported as issues to GitHub as soon as possible. Thanks in advance!