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snoowrap and the future #370

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Venefilyn opened this issue Nov 2, 2022 · 9 comments
Open

snoowrap and the future #370

Venefilyn opened this issue Nov 2, 2022 · 9 comments

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@Venefilyn
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The activity of snoowrap is known to all as being almost non-existent. We are two maintainers with busy lives of our own which puts snoowrap quite low on our list of things we want to do. That is not to say that people don't use snoowrap, quite a few do and people ask for help in r/redditdev frequently. But it is simply too much work to keep up with for two people

With the v2.0 branch created and our big PR from @iMrDJAi merged into it, we are seemingly doing progress right? But this PR has been up for more than a year, needing attention from me and @not-an-aardvark, but not gotten the necessary review. As the interest kept piling up and my latest comment there about the v2.0 branch, something needs to change for snoowrap.

I can see a few roads we can go down and I would implore the community to share their opinions on what works best for them, as well as what you prefer and what you think is realistic.

  1. Archive the project, put it in hands of newer projects to handle the Reddit API in the JS Ecosystem or point them towards the Python Reddit API Wrapper (praw)
  2. Move to an organisation and be more open to adding community contributors. (For this to happen we need contributors to sign up and help out, otherwise we're back to square one)
  3. Leave it as it is, with barely any contributions making it in due to lack of time
@Venefilyn Venefilyn pinned this issue Nov 2, 2022
@Venefilyn Venefilyn mentioned this issue Nov 2, 2022
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@FoxxMD
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FoxxMD commented Nov 2, 2022 •
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I think in the short term 2. is the right way to move but I wouldn't put all my eggs in one basket yet...

I'm sure we're all familiar with what Soon™ means in reddit terms but developer platform is coming and if the reddit engineering blog is a sign of things to come it will be built on top of GraphQL or something other than the current, "legacy" api snoowrap is based on. If that ends up being the case then 1. will be better the better option and a new project would be a better option.

I hate to say "don't do anything until we see what reddit does" because who knows how much time that might take but I have a hunch the new platform will have many more features than the current API and be easier to interact with. They might even have an actual SDK/client library for JS.

EDIT: to add, some JS api libraries under active development for reddit:

@iMrDJAi
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iMrDJAi commented Nov 3, 2022

I believe that option 2 is the right one, I really think that snoowrap still has a future. The community need a proper Reddit API implementation in JavaScript, and snoowrap has always provided that over the past few years, there are barely other libraries that serve that purpose. But as the world of JavaScript has evolved since then - so is it the Reddit API - snoowrap needs an upgrade, at this stage completing v2 is the highest priority.

If Reddit are going to make their GraphQL API public at some point, it would be better for snoowrap v2 to be ready when that happens, so the focus will be redirected to adopting the new features.

By the way, I have created an organization months ago in case it's needed (https://github.com/snoowrap), we may use it as a hub for new contributors that are interested to join the efforts.

@TheAlexLichter
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I also agree that option #2 might be the best here. #3 is always an option later too if necessary/no progress.

@prmichaelsen
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I'm interesting in contributing. I use the package in my projects so I'd be sad to see it go

@Venefilyn
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I'm sure we're all familiar with what Soon™ means in reddit terms but developer platform is coming and if the reddit engineering blog is a sign of things to come it will be built on top of GraphQL or something other than the current, "legacy" api snoowrap is based on. If that ends up being the case then 1. will be better the better option and a new project would be a better option.

So, quick update. I got access to the new Developer Platform to see the future for Snoowrap. From what I am seeing from the documentation there is a TypeScript library for interacting with their new API and might even replace Snoowrap. I say might, because the documentation is very focused on applications that hook into actions, i.e. you can click buttons and trigger the app from the website itself, kind of like how slash-commands work like in Discord

With that said, there is documentation for submitting posts and comments etc. and classes for a bunch of things which might be able to replace Snoowrap. If that turns out to be the case, it seems like a natural direction to shut down Snoowrap once their API becomes a reality. I'll have to look into it more to make sure that is the case

@prmichaelsen
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prmichaelsen commented Apr 8, 2023 via email

@FoxxMD
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FoxxMD commented Apr 10, 2023

@SpyTec a reddit admin on the devvit team in the discord confirmed they plan on having feature parity with the existing public API, eventually.

@Venefilyn
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Thanks! I found the comment

With that in mind, this is my proposal for the future of snoowrap

Keep snoowrap as-is in its current state. Once new Reddit Developer Platform becomes publicly available we re-assess the state of it and whether it has feature parity with snoowrap. If Devvit ever gets feature parity we will archive snoowrap. Anyone against?

CC @not-an-aardvark

@not-an-aardvark
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IMO, we should also mark snoowrap as deprecated now regardless of whether Devvit has feature parity. It would be nice if we could ensure some kind of continuity by waiting for Devvit, but it's already the case that we don't really have time to maintain snoowrap, and I think adding a "deprecated" marker now would effectively just be a clarification of the status quo. We would basically be saying, "we think it still works, but you're sort of on your own" unless some critical security issue is discovered that we need to patch.

Ultimately, we're doing this for free in our (now very limited) spare time, and any lack of continuity is Reddit's problem, not ours. If anything, officially deprecating snoowrap now might encourage reddit to invest more in Devvit to make it available sooner. On the other hand, if we say that snoowrap is officially "not deprecated yet" when in fact we don't have time to maintain it, Reddit might prioritize other things over Devvit on the (misguided) basis that there are already well-maintained third-party alternatives. I think the best thing we can do for the community is to be honest about the fact that there isn't really a maintained library now, and it seems like the right way to do that is by deprecating snoowrap.

@mar-cymk mar-cymk mentioned this issue May 7, 2023
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@TheAlexLichter @FoxxMD @Venefilyn @prmichaelsen @not-an-aardvark @iMrDJAi