[tomas789]

Hate to say that but I’d be happier if this never happened.

I think many newcomers think that Rocket is “the web framework” in Rust. And if author goes silent again they will be let down. It casts kinda bad shadow on Rust community but we have better alternatives.

[Qwuke]

I'm not sure I understand this - I think having different options for web frameworks is great for Rust! Actually, it's probably more useful for Rust than other languages because Rust ends up being used by such a different range of developers and applications, and each framework ends up having such different opinions and providing different levels of abstractions.

[tomas789]

Rocket was created by Sergio Benitez. He is almost exclusively the only contributor to the project. Not because people don't want to contribute to it, but because the author wants to have it as sort of his child's brain. And there is nothing bad about that. But recently he said at a conference (as I read on Reddit) that he does not have much time anymore to invest in its development. That means that there is probably no bright future for Rocket. Especially because a batteries-included framework like this takes so much effort to develop and polish.

I think that a website or API backend is the first project for many newcomers to Rust. It would be better for them to have first experience with other frameworks such that they are not let down by Rocket as it might cast a bad light at the whole ecosystem.

Rocket looks tempting because a/ it has a nice website b/ it looks feature complete c/ it is similar to Django/Flask which might make it more familiar d/ other web frameworks don't have particularly appealing documentation.

[Qwuke]

>Rocket was created by Sergio Benitez. He is almost exclusively the only contributor to the project. Not because people don't want to contribute to it, but because the author wants to have it as sort of his child's brain.

I've talked to Sergio before in-person and got a completely different take of how he views contributions, but also, apparently he's explicitly trying to democratize Rocket's governance as part of this new stream of updates. I think the 0.5 release is a good sign he's doing his best to maintain his flavor of framework despite time constraints.

>I think that a website or API backend is the first project for many newcomers to Rust. It would be better for them to have first experience with other frameworks such that they are not let down by Rocket as it might cast a bad light at the whole ecosystem.

I guess your experience with it being a let down is contrasted with mine of how the 0.5 release candidates have been great to make web apps with - especially for new comers who want to experience a very ergonomic "secure by default" web framework in a language that makes major promises about safety, but also where encountering new behaviors with the Rust compiler can be an impediment from writing anything in the language.

>Rocket looks tempting because a/ it has a nice website b/ it looks feature complete c/ it is similar to Django/Flask which might make it more familiar d/ other web frameworks don't have particularly appealing documentation.

Perhaps we should spend some time as a community to make a website showing some examples and pros and cons of the various web frameworks. A good example to show newcomers that might help them choose a framework is demonstrating error messaging that some macros in Rocket emit vs a similar error in Axum that wouldn't ever have an error. Or showing them tower middleware crate ecosystem vs the middleware ecosystem in Rocket (or which parts of rocket that don't even need middleware or setup vs Axum) - not by hoping that the developer puts less effort in the project or kills it, which takes the options away from the community.

If I started on a website that does that, would you be willing to provide me some feedback? I'd be happy to take on that burden if there's a lack of a single, good resource for it.

[thomasmost]

I'm a full-stack developer that started my work on Bend using Rocket and then migrated to Axum. Would be very happy to contribute/be a part of a community initiative like the one you describe

[nicoburns]

> He is almost exclusively the only contributor to the project. Not because people don't want to contribute to it, but because the author wants to have it as sort of his child's brain.

This has been the case, but the announcement of this release also came with the announcement of the creation of a non-profit foundation to own the Rocket project, and the opening up of development / maintainership to the community

[tomas789]

You're right. I did not see the announcement [1] before. This can possibly make all the difference.

[1] https://rocket.rs/v0.5/news/2023-11-17-rwf2-prelaunch/

[__s]

https://rocket.rs/v0.5/news/2023-11-17-rwf2-prelaunch

They address your concern, a foundation is being created

[speed_spread]

This is the kind of problem that can solve itself, if enough people adopt a project and depend on it, its maintenance can be organized. It helps if the original author is willing to help with the transition to a community-maintained project, which seems to be the case with Rocket.

[felipellrocha]

Can’t blame them for trying