Angular 2

[Awk34]

After everything @ ng-conf 2016, I now have a plan on transitioning the generator to Angular 2.

Requires:

• Modules (webpack)
• upgrade adapter
• New router documentation

[Koslun]

Care to share the general outline of your plan? Is it simply first getting Webpack / Browserify / SystemJS in place and then a big bang approach with creating an alternative implementation using Angular 2? And envisioning keeping Angular 1 or Angular 1 and 2 hybrid?

Other than various blog posts and Angular 2 docs, inspirational projects one might wanna glance at:

• https://github.com/NathanWalker/angular2-seed-advanced - Seemingly working example project with Angular 2, Electron and NativeScript.
• https://github.com/FountainJS/generator-fountain-angular2 Pre-alpha of Angular 2 version of the next generation of yeoman project https://github.com/swiip/generator-gulp-angular.
• https://github.com/ericmdantas/generator-ng-fullstack - Yeoman project with Angular 1, 2 with NodeJS and Go backend. Mentioned in issue Angular 2.0 #884
• https://github.com/angular/angular-cli - The official angular solution using Broccoli and extending ember-cli.

[Awk34]

I'll be initially removing Bower and opting for Webpack (I would eventually like to support SystemJS as well). I wanted to do this a while ago, but it's a large overhaul. Then I'll set up the upgrade adapter and move components over piece-by-piece. This will make the transition easier, as well as allow for generator users to see exactly how it would be done in one of his/her own apps. Then eventually a full cut-over. I spoke with Igor about Flow support with Angular 2, but there were some reasons I won't get into as to why that got pushed off. At the conference, Brad pretty much said that Angular 2 is production ready for most people, so that was another big deciding factor.

[macneib]

Not trying to stir the pot here, but why wouldn't now be a good time to commit to a single task runner? There are a lot of shops that just use npm now for task running, so providing Gulp is kind of a nice bonus, and Grunt seems like excessive work to keep it up to date. At the time this project was started there was only Grunt, but now it seems like we're past that and can move on.

btw: I still use grunt often, but for the sake of alleviating pressure on the maintainers, and being a lean && mean scaffolding project, one task runner should be good enough. no?

Thoughts?

[Awk34]

@macneib oh, you don't know how much I'd like to ditch Grunt, but look at this chart:

Now probably would be a good time to commit to Gulp, but I wonder how the users of the generator would react.

[Awk34]

FYI #1911

[macneib]

@Awk34 here's a possible idea, perhaps communicating clearly well in advance where everyone can see it that grunt deprecation is coming then you could measure to see if users are in fact beginning the migration process.

could you console a message in the generator or a warning when selecting Grunt/Gulp that support 'may' be discontinued at a specific version or date?

people with already existing grunt projects won't be affected, however using an tiny bit of FUD may be effective at migrating new projects to one task runner. just an idea.

[Awk34]

FUD = Fear, uncertainty and doubt (I had to look that one up, although I hope it doesn't exactly apply here)

I think this sounds like a reasonable plan

[macneib]

FUD <- for lack of a better term. Apologies, I don't mean to suggest scaring people out of grunt, but a clear warning with time to prepare would be fair warning to everyone.

Edit: Migrating to ng2 is a significant undertaking. Bower is being tossed and no one has objected thus far. I think users appreciate things are going to change, and streamlining the project to make that happen sooner rather than later would be the priority IMHO.

[Awk34]

I plan on maintaining 3.x.x for the forseeable future, at least

[macneib]

Will ng2 be in 4.x.x?

I just rolled an angular-cli based project last night, and I think it's still too early to use, however I think we all can agree that pre-positioning this generator to be 'ng2-ready' would be kind of a nice thing.

[Awk34]

@macneib the plan right now is to release webpack + ng1 with 4.0.0, and ng2 with 5.0.0