RFC: Intentions for TinyBase v6

[jamesgpearce]

Hey everyone! Here's what I'm thinking about for v6.0:

No new functionality.

Rather than a seismic change to everything that makes upgrades harder, my suggestion is to just use v6.0 as a stable base from which we can start adding new stuff again. It will have four main changes:

• Upgrade react peer dependencies to v19
• Upgrade the eslint dev dependency to v9
• Migrate the build scripts to bun // insufficient database compat
• Remove all builds except ESM
• Remove the tools module & CLI

Hopefully the first two are not too controversial. The third & fourth I think will improve the development metabolism (for me at least!)

But a word on the final item. The tools module was the original way to create typed APIs, with a code-mod that creates new ORM-like files based on schemas (details here). The TinyBase CLI is the main way to invoke this module.

Instead, I want everyone to use the Typescript-inference technique for schema support (details here). This is a much smarter and more consistent way to type your API.

My rationale for removing the tools module is three-fold:

• It is a big messy module that struggles to keep up with creating typed versions of the core Store API. It slows me down on the core API.
• I want to improve the schema support in v6.x releases (e.g. arrays, nulls etc) and again, the tools module will slow that down dramatically.
• TinyBase as a whole is carrying some unusual peer dependencies (eg Prettier) just for the purpose of this module, which we can rationalize.
• I don't think people use it much. (Do you?)

Consider this discussion as a request for comments! Are you using the tools module? Would you miss it? If so, what can we do? Spin the current module out? Or any other thoughts.

Thanks!

[whatisagi]

This sounds reasonable. I think upgrading to React 19 is a very good idea.

[jamesgpearce]

OK, check out the new beta!

[whatisagi]

Thanks, sounds great! Btw, I just wanted to add that I really support the effort of making tinybase lean and small. I think perfecting the current sets of features and trimming down things are much more preferable over adding “nice-to-have” features.