I just stopped using their NextJS project because you can no longer self host the middleware, they now only support edge runtime and several libraries don't work with it.
I'm calling this situation Fauxpen Source. The recent moves definitely feel anticompetitive or at least trying to force you into using their products
I'm migrating to vite+vike (next/nuxt like experience for any framework)
Middleware does work with self-hosting[1]. It’s a more limited runtime that’s based on web standard APIs, which creates optionality for running it in high performance / resource constrained scenarios.
[1] https://nextjs.org/docs/app/building-your-application/deploy...
It _can_ work, but _won't_ for most real world workloads
Beyond the runtime limitations, it is poorly designed and requires you to effectively write a router when the rest of the system has automatic routing assembly
If you have any concrete feedback on what we should improve, I’m all ears. We heard feedback from the community that they wanted better documentation and guidance on self-hosting and we shipped it last month[1]. Curious what you’d like to see improved.
Maybe there is a class of developer out there that doesn't get spooked by that but it definitely has created an adversarial place for Vercel in my mind. I feel like I need to be careful when touching anything Vercel have touched so that I don't fall into a trap.