The future of GraphQL Yoga

It’s been almost 4 weeks since release of graphql-js v14. There’s plenty of PRs with deps update but the last commit on this repo was 26 days ago.

I’ve tried to update the deps in my project but graphql-yoga is still in 0.13.x ecosystem which results in plenty of errors like this:

npm WARN apollo-cache-control@0.1.1 requires a peer of graphql@0.10.x - 0.13.x but none is installed. You must install peer dependencies yourself.
npm WARN apollo-cache-inmemory@1.2.10 requires a peer of graphql@0.11.7 || ^0.12.0 || ^0.13.0 but none is installed. You must install peer dependencies yourself.
npm WARN apollo-server-core@1.4.0 requires a peer of graphql@^0.9.0 || ^0.10.0 || ^0.11.0
|| ^0.12.0 || ^0.13.0 but none is installed. You must install peer dependencies yourself.
npm WARN apollo-tracing@0.1.4 requires a peer of graphql@0.10.x - 0.13.x but none is installed. You must install peer dependencies yourself.
npm WARN apollo-upload-server@5.0.0 requires a peer of graphql@^0.13.1 but none is installed. You must install peer dependencies yourself.
npm WARN graphql-config@2.0.0 requires a peer of graphql@^0.11.0 || ^0.12.0 || ^0.13.0 but none is installed. You must install peer dependencies yourself.
npm WARN graphql-import@0.4.5 requires a peer of graphql@^0.11.0 || ^0.12.0 || ^0.13.0 but none is installed. You must install peer dependencies yourself.
npm WARN graphql-extensions@0.0.10 requires a peer of graphql@0.10.x - 0.13.x but none is
installed. You must install peer dependencies yourself.
npm WARN graphql-import@0.6.0 requires a peer of graphql@^0.11.0 || ^0.12.0 || ^0.13.0 but none is installed. You must install peer dependencies yourself.
npm WARN graphql-middleware@1.6.6 requires a peer of graphql@^0.13.2 but none is installed. You must install peer dependencies yourself.
npm WARN graphql-query-complexity@0.2.0 requires a peer of graphql@^0.13.2 but none is installed. You must install peer dependencies yourself.
npm WARN graphql-subscriptions@0.5.8 requires a peer of graphql@^0.10.5 || ^0.11.3 || ^0.12.0 || ^0.13.0 but none is installed. You must install peer dependencies yourself.
npm WARN graphql-tag@2.9.2 requires a peer of graphql@^0.9.0 || ^0.10.0 || ^0.11.0 || ^0.12.0 || ^0.13.0 but none is installed. You must install peer dependencies yourself.
npm WARN graphql-tools@3.1.1 requires a peer of graphql@^0.13.0 but none is installed. You must install peer dependencies yourself.

I also get famous Cannot use GraphQLSchema "[object GraphQLSchema]" from another module or realm. error while trying to use the subscriptions. And it also rejects to compile new GraphQLServer({ schema }) in TypeScript as there’s a conflict of GraphQLSchema typings between 0.13 and 14.0 😕

I would like to create a PR to fix that and upgrade the deps but someone has to merge it then 😄

[schickling]

Hey everyone, there have been a lot of questions and confusion around the future of graphql-yoga lately. We want to use this GitHub issue as a forum to openly discuss in which direction the project should be headed.

Context & History

For context, we have released graphql-yoga almost one year ago when setting up a GraphQL server (using apollo-server or express-graphql) involved a good amount of boilerplate and manual work; it certainly wasn’t as easy as it should have been. This was true for rather simple GraphQL servers and became even more complex when features like subscriptions or middleware would have to be added.

Back then, we were striving to create the simplest solution for developers to get up-and-running with GraphQL. With graphql-yoga, we came up with a simple, straightforward and intuitive API to launch a GraphQL server that has been received very positively from the community.

GraphQL Yoga Today

Since the release of Apollo Server 2.0 which uses the same API as graphql-yoga and also comes with default support for GraphQL Playground (instead of graphiql), a lot of the value originally provided by graphql-yoga has vanished.

We have been scratching our heads over the past few weeks thinking hard about the future of graphql-yoga, whether we can find a direction that makes it so distinct from apollo-server to invest further in the project or switch to minimal-maintenance mode.

As is obvious from the state of this repository, graphql-yoga has not been maintained properly over the past few weeks. We apologize for that!

The Future of GraphQL Yoga

There currently are a few urgent issues with graphql-yoga that make it unusable in certain contexts, e.g. the 0.14 release of graphql-js. We’re already working on them and will release a new version in the coming days.

As for the mid-/longterm future of the project, we’d love to hear your opinions and discuss them openly! Do you have ideas or wishes how graphql-yoga could have a distinct value proposition over apollo-server? Are there any features that you’re missing in the current version? Whatever comes to mind that helps us make a decision regarding the future is more than welcome in this thread!

Thanks 💚

[LawJolla]

I think Yoga, as is, still provides great value. For instance, it includes Apollo-Uploader out of the box for file uploads. The Express middleware API is miles better than Apollo 2.0.

Going forward, I think there’s room to be an opinionated Apollo Server. For instance, does anyone really care that you can use Apollo Server on top of Hapi? Choosing Express simplifies and streamlines everything. And I’d like to see more opinions incorporated like best practices for authentication and authorization.

In other words, keep doing what made Yoga so great – an opinionated, simpler API.

As a business decision, Yoga may not make sense any longer, but from a developer standpoint, I think it has legs… or downward dogs. (Oh yoga puns)