I’m wondering are there any plans on future Action Cable development?
A lot of work has been done in the last two years (mostly bug fixes, server optimizations).
But we’re still on the same page as two years ago from the API point of view, in spite of the number of feature requests and even pull request.
We still don’t have testing utils (although I’ve proposed PRs: #23211 – more that a year ago! – and #27191).
Action Cable looks like an abandoned child. Yes, it’s still a child. There is a lot of questions to discuss and work to do.
But I came here not to complain. I want to offer my help in Action Cable development (looks like proposing changes thru PRs not working), 'cause it looks like the core team doesn’t have time to maintain the sub-project (or you got a secret plan, kind of “Action Cable 2.0”?).
I’m already working on Action Cable related projects, such as AnyCable and Lite Cable (which is a result of my work (still unmerged PRs) on Action Cable *translated *for non-Rails projects). But the development of these projects highly depends on Action Cable itself. That’s why I’m here)
Thanks for all your work on these PRs, Vlad. Reviewing them, though, doesn’t seem to me like they were ignored. Lots of discussion and back and forth on all of them.
A good baseline assumption when a framework or feature in Rails isn’t seeing specific updates for a while is that it’s doing what it needs to do for the people who originally contributed. I wrote a bunch of the original code with Pratik and Matthew, but now it Just Works for my needs, so I’ve directed my personal attention elsewhere. That doesn’t mean the project is abandoned, just that there’s an ebb and flow in many open source contributors bandwidth for specific projects or features. Since these tickets saw the majority of their interaction, we’ve pushed hard to get Rails 5.1 out, which included a bunch of other things. So that’s where a lot of the energy went.
In terms of plans, I don’t think there’s anything more specific for Action Cable than for any of the other frameworks. We keep working, keep improving. But PRs need reviews, which means bandwidth from senior contributors in a position to apply that. Doubly so if the changes are large. And that bandwidth will, as described above, wax and wane.
I see that Kasper was the last Rails core contributor to help with the reviews. He’s just shipped encrypted secrets and the form_with unification for Rails 5.1. So maybe he’ll have more time to pick this back up with that out the door. But it would be great to have more eyes on the reviews as well. Open invitation to anyone who’s interested in diving in and understanding Action Cable.