When will a stable version express 5 is supposed to be released?

[touhidurrr]

Currently we have beta.1. When will we get stable?

[dougwilson]

Hello, and thank you for your queation. It should be soon, as the last few items in the PR are finished and merged. The biggest issue has been the lack of usage and feedback on it, including bugs. You have been a huge help in using it and providing feedback. In fact, of all the years, you are basically the only one who has done so, so thank you!

That said, I would like to get it wrapped up in June, and any more issuea you find the sooner the bigger the help that would be 👍

[ex1st]

Hi @dougwilson we're using express@5 several years and it works fine, but we have unresolved peerDeps in swagger-ui-express I think a release will make many people happy. Thank you!

[wmaciejak]

The biggest issue has been the lack of usage and feedback on it, including bugs. You have been a huge help in using it and providing feedback.

Thank you @dougwilson for actively maintaining it! I think that you should jump on the deep and just release it, then people will start using express@5 and you will get the most valuable feedback :) Looking forward :)

[touhidurrr]

Currently, I use express@5 to run UncivServer.xyz and have been using it for some months. The site currently gets over 10M requests per month and didn’t see any express related issues by far. The ones I encountered turned out to be either mistakes from my side or design choices rather than bugs.

The only real problem I had while using express@5 is that although many middlewares and methods and such from express@4 also exist in express@5 they are not documented yet for some reason.

So, I think express@5 might just be suitable for a stable release already after documentation about it has been revised (or just copied into express@5 docs).

Screenshots of site statistics of my last month.

[sheplu]

Hello,

Also using express@5 in some project on my side but not on company project. Waiting for the official release for that :)
Anything blocking for the release @dougwilson How can I help?

[filipecatraia]

I've been using Express 5 since early 2021, I could've provided more feedback. On our end, it's used for an API that has basically never failed us. I went back to Express after trying a number of alternatives, and boy, I'm very happy with how boring and stable Express can be. Using v5 we have improved TypeScript support and can define routes in spec files that are shared with the frontend. Zero bugs AFAIK!

[karlhorky]

We have been using Express 5 in production for about 6 months now, more stable than Express 4.

[sheplu]

@karlhorky Do you have some feedbacks ? performances, broken middleware or libs ? I would love to discuss with you on that if you do have some time

[gugahoi]

Using v5 we have improved TypeScript support and can define routes in spec files that are shared with the frontend.

Any chance you are willing to share how this is done?

[P4sca1]

I am also using express 5 for a few months in production now. The migration was straightforward and every third party middleware that I use still works.
The only problem I faced are typescript typings. Maybe those could be provided together with the library, or the @types/express package needs to be updated.

[filipecatraia]

Using v5 we have improved TypeScript support and can define routes in spec files that are shared with the frontend.

Any chance you are willing to share how this is done?

Sure, I'm happy to take some time to create an example repo. But to keep this thread clean, I suggest you subscribe to the empty repo I've just created, and later in the week I'll try pushing an example there.

[mwanago]

Thank you @dougwilson for all of your hard work.
Is there any estimated date of release for the Express 5?
Take care.

[gavin-c-tcg]

Hope to release Express 5 this year (2023).

[datner]

Seeing as v5 wasn't touched since the beginning of last year, @dougwilson lowering his activity rate substantially, the v5 branch with a 175 commit difference (100 behind 75 ahead), and still no available types. I fear that express is not going to release v5. More than that, it seems like it's on Maintenance Mode and on its way to becoming abandonware.
This is not the fault of the maintainer. Who made this absolutely era defining software for free thanklessly for years on end and deserves to be immortalized,
but if we want express to live on we as a community need to find another maintainer to help before it's too late

[dougwilson]

Hi @datner there is no need to be fear-mongering. Perhaps you should reach out before posting things that are not true. If you want to help contribute, shoot me an email and I'd be happy to meet with you to explain on what is being worked on. And of course my own Github activity is lower, because I have been helping others commit code to the other repositories that Express 5 code has been moved to (and it was just the holidays, at least where I, which I took a long-needed break).

Right now, I am working with Github on a protentional security issue, and if correct, we'll get new released to all lines. Express 5 is pretty much completed at this point, and we're just finishing up the last code merges in upstream modules in order to bump the dependencies finally in the 5.0 branch.

[datner]

Thank you @dougwilson thats very reassuring to hear ❤️ you're right perhaps I should have reached out. My apologies 🙏🏻
I figured you were off doing other things or getting a vacation (or just growing tired of coding).
I do mostly high-level fullstack work and in typescript. Therefore I not familiar enough with node primitives or low-level abstractions like express and friends, I don't think I would make a valuable contributor unfortunately..
That said, I could give it a shot 😄

[filipecatraia]

Thank you for the update @dougwilson, that's fantastic to hear. Again, not that we need constant, breaking changes. I really appreciate how stable Express is.

By the by: do you have any way to be supported? Or are you not looking for any tips/sponsors? Otherwise me and my company would be happy to chip in. Express is probably the most important library we use, I'd like to make sure it keeps going 🖤

[sheplu]

Thanks for the update @dougwilson ! is there a roadmap with missing features part in which we can contribute ? I will have some time to help on Express@5 and some linked projects. I remember saying an issue in the past few years but it seems I cannot found it anymore.

[steve1337]

Looking forward to version 5 and improved error handling.

Just had a production bug last week because we made some mistakes implement async middleware and saw in the docs that v5 fixes this problem!

[itssumitrai]

Is there a feature roadmap planned for v5 or any place I can see the differences between v4 & v5 ? I am curious if a lot of features like html streaming, http2, etc are supported in v5.

[abenhamdine]

Is there a feature roadmap planned for v5 or any place I can see the differences between v4 & v5 ?

see milestone https://github.com/expressjs/express/milestone/11
and especially v5 PR #2237

I am curious if a lot of features like html streaming, http2, etc are supported in v5.

for http2, see PR #3730

[mikr13]

Hi @datner there is no need to be fear-mongering. Perhaps you should reach out before posting things that are not true. If you want to help contribute, shoot me an email and I'd be happy to meet with you to explain on what is being worked on. And of course my own Github activity is lower, because I have been helping others commit code to the other repositories that Express 5 code has been moved to (and it was just the holidays, at least where I, which I took a long-needed break).

Right now, I am working with Github on a protentional security issue, and if correct, we'll get new released to all lines. Express 5 is pretty much completed at this point, and we're just finishing up the last code merges in upstream modules in order to bump the dependencies finally in the 5.0 branch.

It was reassuring to hear this is January but it's June of 2023 now. As a maintainer of such large project, please be more transparent & responsible about progress. A lot of organizations & individuals use/depend on it, so much so that it's hard to convince clients or management about better updated alternatives of Express.js. It has been synonymous with Node.js server development.
It's a shame to see such poor support for this while so many of us developers are always showing support & rooting for the project. Please do better & if you can't due to whatever reasons, please mark it as archived so that we can tell people to look for other better alternatives!

[dougwilson]

Hi @mikr13 I'm really confused why you think the project should be archived and abandoned when it works well and many, includinf myself, use it every day for projects. There are not outstanding bugs in our stable release and anyone who wants to use a different framework is always welcome to do so. I'm sorry you feel there is a lack of transparency, even though I have been providing information as soon as people ask, just like I am to you here.

I have been busy recently with triaging security vulnerability reports for this and various other modules, many of which are bogus, but it takes a lot of time to triage these and debate with rhe reporter and orevent bogus CVEs from being issues that cannot be fixed.

Forward progress is still being made. If there is a particular thing you can llend a hand with, please let me know, as that would be a great way to help move it forward if that is what you are looking for instead of just posting fear mongering comments on issues.

I would encourage you, or anyone else who is looking to help move it forward, to reach out and I would be happy to Zoom with you or similar and we can work on the remaining items together, like see what you want to help with or hear what there is and you can let me know what you can do. That is really the best way to support your open source projects: by contributing. I am happy to help you help me even if you don't know much about Express because, yes, the more folks the faster it is to get things done.

[calidion]

@mikr13
there is no big problem in express.js as a basic web framework.

If you want to have advanced features, you can try aex.
it has the following features:

1. compatibility with most express middleware
2. async/await support
3. dependency injection
4. object oriented programming support
5. build-in typescript support
6. scoped variables passing
7. a lot of prepared decorators to simplify web devlopment.
8. Web Straight Line Theory backed.

[dougwilson]

I'm going to lock + close this issue for now as I believe it has run it's course. There are newer issues than this one with more up to date info as well, so keeping this older one that slipped thoigh the cracks open is likely more confusing.

The summary of this issue, is that I hope that release stable this year (2023), though the project is run only by volunteers like myself so exact timelines and dates are not a part of this project (nor have they ever been). If you would like to help work on issues in the milestone, report bugs, or even help with documentation or help with planning, please feel free to reach out.