Reviving Ratchet: Let's give Ratchet the love it deserves!

[clue]

Ratchet is a great piece of software and it is successfully used in countless projects! But let's be realistic: It could use some love!

At the moment, we're making very good progress with ReactPHP v3 (see e.g. reactphp/event-loop#271) and Framework X. As a next step, we want to achieve the same level of velocity for Ratchet. Supporting the latest PHP and PHPUnit versions feels like a good starting point to bring Ratchet back to speed again, followed by tackling the huge pile of open support requests. So in a gist, we know what to do with Ratchet, the problem is that we have to find the time to actually do it. I've also reached out to the other maintainers, but before spending too much time on the details, I would like to see how much demand there is to work out a sustainable plan for the longer-term development.

As a first step, help us figure out demand by leaving a comment or an emoji reaction:

• 👍 Like the idea, generally interested
• ❤️ Love the idea and would consider sponsoring further development of Ratchet
• 🚀 Ratchet is used in our company (let's have a chat!)
• Anything else, please join the discussion!

[dvdknaap]

So whats the plan because this package is now blocking to upgrade to symfony 7 ?

Can we upgrade to the latest version and then do a release and then work on other features ?

[SimonFrings]

@dvdknaap That is ultimately the plan. Like @clue stated above, we're currently looking into project funding and once we know how to proceed with Ratchet, we'll probably start by adding support for the latest PHP and PHPUnit versions. We also have a separate discussion for Symfony 7 in #1045, so I think it makes sense to discuss further details in there.

@clue and the rest of our team are currently busy working on the release for a first version of Framework X, so we'll come back here once we freed some time 👍

[userofjack]

I have enough time to participate in the development of Ratchet, and we are currently using it. How should I participate in development?

[neoteknic]

@clue maybe add write access to people who want to help ? like @userofjack

[mkrasselt1]

I am Using it in my company as well, would like to help - at least a litte if i could :)

[igorbelikov]

I think that a lot of people would support this post, but no one knows about it, because everyone is used to seeing the message “last modified 3 years ago” and simply do not know that you are going to continue supporting

overall this is great news and we are still using ratchet

just start making changes or apply pull requests :)

[rperdomoalhc]

I think that a lot of people would support this post, but no one knows about it, because everyone is used to seeing the message “last modified 3 years ago” and simply do not know that you are going to continue supporting

overall this is great news and we are still using ratchet

just start making changes or apply pull requests :)

Since I saw the last commit, I thought it was abandoned.

I'm deciding to integrate it into my company. They did a very good job!

[johnrix]

Since I saw the last commit, I thought it was abandoned.

Ditto. Perhaps update the README with a reference to this thread. That will then also reset the last commit time.

[clue]

Thank you so much for all the amazing feedback we've received on Ratchet! We are truly grateful for the excitement and the offers to help with the development. Excited to use this momentum to move forward! 🚀

1. First we need to get the project up to date with the latest versions, so this is something I personally would like to work on first. Once this is completed, I would love to get more people involved, so we greatly appreciate any help and contributions.

2. Right now, we are finalizing the project handover with @cboden and hope to get the project up to speed again as soon as possible. In the meantime, we also work on a number of other bigger open-source projects like @reactphp (which Ratchet builds on top of) and need to balance our priorities and find adequate project funding to allow us to keep shipping.

3. You can help us! For now, I would like to set up a simple sponsorship goal of reaching 10 new sponsors (any amount) to see how much the community is willing to support this project. Once reached, we will start pushing the next PRs to get Ratchet updated to support the latest PHP and PHPUnit versions and use this as a starting point for bigger updates to come. Even just 10 x $1 would help achieve our initial goal, but the more sponsors the better obviously, so especially curious about any company sponsors reaching out!

Please help us getting Ratchet up to speed by becoming a sponsor through ReactPHP, we're thankful for every contribution! ❤️

[clue]

Also agree it's a good idea to link more prominently to this ticket, I've updated the readme for the next couple of weeks and will continue posting more updates as soon as possible!