Sorry about that. It's difficult to maintain effectively two large open source projects like this simultaneously, especially since this is a side project for most of us. We've probably dropped the ball a little, especially since v2 has taken a long time to build. But the good news is we are getting very close. Docs and migration guides are our main priorities next.

You don't have to be sorry, you're providing a high quality open-source product for free. It just is what it is.

Addendum: I manage a very small open-source product (https://www.planimeter.org/grid-sdk/), and when you're creating something that competes with an established incumbent, all you can do is your best and focus on the most impactful features. Individuals like the one above saying things like, "I'll be avoiding parcel like the plague," is really disheartening, but try and focus on their concerns more than the actual words they use.

Frustrated people are a goldmine for feedback that many projects simply do not receive. Take it in stride, know that you have something others do not, and use it to your advantage. It can be hard to separate your feelings from the words used, but there are diamonds there.

Great comment. I think this applies for pretty much all products or projects, especially in their early stages. There will always be people who don’t get it or have different priorities. It’s ok. When I showed people early versions of EnvKey[1], it felt like half loved it and half thought it was completely pointless. /shrug. At the time I found it discouraging, but now I see that getting even a single person to genuinely love what you’ve built is a major accomplishment and a really good sign that you’re on the right track.

If you can find one, you can find ten. If you can find ten, you can find a hundred. And so on.

It’s also extremely important to remember that the opposite of love is not hate, negativity, or criticism. It’s indifference. Harsh critics can become some of your best users/customers/advocates if you’re able to learn from them and win them over.

1 - https://www.envkey.com

That's a healthy attitude, I'll try to remember that one next time I get harsh feedback.

It's tough to separate my ego from my work.

for what its worth i think adobe pays devon to work on tooling (parcel and react aria|spectrum) somewhat full time and he even has a team around him. but no doubt its just extraordinarily hard to do regardless

I am paid to work on react-aria/spectrum. Parcel is a side project.

thats... just incredibly impressive. hats off!

Don't sweat it, in hindsight the tool just isn't for me (though it was great while it suited my needs). I'm affraid one reason for these issues is that parcel tries to do everything at once with as little configuration as possible. When it works: great. When it doesn't: not-so-great.

Sure the out of date dependancies thing could be seen as a problem with post-css plugins that require a newer version, but the unfortunate fact is that in webdev land, everything seems to evolve at a breakneck pace, foregoing backwards compatability. And when some part doesn't match, the buildtool suddenly becomes unusable. (webpack is way less easy to setup, the flipside is you can for example choose your postcss version)

There's a roadmap section saying explicitly that they're not RC yet:

https://v2.parceljs.org/blog/beta3/#roadmap

So it was expected that they would be breaking stuff on their way. I would rather say "I'll keep an eye on Parcel until it becomes stable".

This information shouldn't be hidden in some document, it should be one of the first things they tell you about in their README and through their versioning (0.1 and 0.2 instead of 1.0 and 2.0).

This is why it's dangerous using cutting edge software. All in all if they have a small team I'd also point them to v2 for a fixed problem.

Rather than backport to some beta version.

(Not giving Parcel zero blame in how ready they present themselves).

Both issues you linked are about upgrading to newer versions. For these kind of issues saying use the new version is completely fine. There were no security risk. No bug that something essential isn't working. It literally please update the software so a new version of some dependency is supported. I would have done the same.

Ya, we are having the same problem. V1 has some broken parts, but so does V2 and documentation is sparse.

> Could be nice but I'll be avoiding parcel like the plague after being confronted by its complete lack of maintenance of parcel v1 while v2 is in beta, and not the

You beat me to it here; it’s a shame. That was my experience, too.