cross-env is "finished" (now in maintenance mode)

[kentcdodds]

Hey folks,

I started cross-env 5 years ago to solve this problem:

{
  "scripts": {
    "build": "cross-env NODE_ENV=production webpack --config build/webpack.config.js"
  }
}

It worked great and I was thrilled that it's been able to solve the problem of cross-platform environment variable setting for years.

Over time, people started adding a bunch of extra features to it and at that time in my OSS experience, I didn't quite understand the value of saying "no, that's out of scope." Luckily, cross-env still solves my issue, so I'm able to use it for it's intended purpose. I think most people who use it are happily using it for that purpose as well.

However, because of the extra features which were added (features which I never needed and only sometimes understood), the codebase has become a hodge-podge of different people's attempts at making things work. I also haven't looked at this codebase as a whole for a long time. I'm sure I could figure it out if I spent a little time on it, but I'm too busy to do that when it's working fine for my use cases.

So I'm declaring cross-env as finished. No new features will be added (and old features will not likely be removed). I don't plan to do any more than fix security/critical bugs and keep the Node.js support up-to-date.

If you need cross-env to do something else, check out the alternatives and/or fork it and create your own (then feel free to add yours to the list of alternatives).

Also, because I know someone is going to offer, cross-env is of sufficient size and usage that I'm not interested in handing it off to another maintainer. I don't want another event-stream situation: https://blog.npmjs.org/post/180565383195/details-about-the-event-stream-incident (cross-env now has more downloads than event-stream did at that time). It's unfortunate that it has to be this way, but that's the world we live in. I don't have time to work on features I don't need, and I don't feel good about handing this off to someone I don't know.

Thanks for understanding (and contributing)! I hope you continue to use and enjoy cross-env!