[Developer Feedback Opportunity]: Motoko Package Manager Improvements/Redesign
The Problem
Those familiar with the Motoko ecosystem have used Vessel, and may or may not have run into various issues in using it along the way.
Vessel has been a great package manager tool to get Motoko off of the ground (developed back in 2019-2020?), but at this point in time the ecosystem has grown to the point where it needs more active improvements and TLC
, or a hard deprecation and switch to put time and effort into a completely different package manager.
For example, with Vessel it is quite difficult to set up and maintain projects that have more complicated dependency trees
. Additionally developers from the Motoko bootcamp (brand new to devs to Motoko and the IC) also hit some of these pain points
This greatly impacts developer productivity, even to the point where developers I’ve worked with lose several days of time due to cryptic Vessel issues .
The Solution
Step 1) - Community Feedback
I know that the Motoko team is well aware of the limitations of Vessel, and would like to dedicate resources to either improve, or completely redesign the Motoko package management experience.
However, dedicating resources is much easier when the community **that’s you** gives their feedback
At this point, I don’t want to speculate on what the Motoko package manager of the future will look like, but first want to open up the discussion for Motoko developers (and even Rust developers or others that used and bounced off of Motoko) to give any and all ideas and critical feedback that you have.
If you need a format/structure - use the below to talk about:
- The experience of using Vessel, especially the current pain points/friction you or others you know have when using Vessel.
- The package managers you enjoy using the most, and why you enjoy using them?
- The developer experience you would like to have when building an IC application.
Step 2) - Feedback Consolidation and Feature Scoping
Once the community completes the feedback portion, this will make is 10X easier for the Motoko team & community to boil down the essence of the necessary improvements, and start scoping out these changes and any necessary redesign.