Atom editor "sunsetted" by Github

[timbl]

The electron platform, which has been a key to many web-based projects being ported to native, and is key to Data Kitchen, has been "sunsetted" by its maintainers the end of last year.

Two quotes from the sunsetting blog

Atom has not had significant feature development for the past several years,

Feature-complete and stable is actually pretty useful.

It’s worth reflecting that Atom has served as the foundation for the Electron framework, which paved the way for the creation of thousands of apps, including Microsoft Visual Studio Code, Slack, and our very own GitHub Desktop.

That's a lot of damage.

Its a community problem. See also eg

Why should you use something other than an electron

[jeff-zucker]

Sigh, I have been eyeing other alternatives. We can get most of the same thing with a bundled CSS + SolidOS + a bit of glue. I have that working locally without Electron. I can demo that along with some other things I've been working on this or a coming Wednesday.

[timbl]

In that solution, what is the HTML engine? Webview?

[jeff-zucker]

At the moment, it uses any browser to access the local file system via a CSS localhost. It could be bundled with a stand-alone chromium or some such. The browser approach allows access to the file system as a pod but does not provide access to native apps. I'm not sure that native app integration is critical to the goals of DK, but if you think it is, I can be convinced. It could be added either with a different bundling tool (Tauri?) or by building it into a custom CSS.

[damooo]

Electron is very much an active project. Only Atom text editor is being sunsetted. But still electron is too much a bloat for practical native apps.

[jeff-zucker]

Tauri uses webview and is lighter weight than electron, it may be a good match.

[timbl]

Meanwhile, directly conflicting news... the Github Download blog says firmly that Atom will continue!

Suggests you shold move from Atom to VSCode .. which itself is based on Electron.