Background
https://github.com/bootstrap-vue/bootstrap-vue is a component library for Vue.js that wraps and extends Bootstrap components for use in Vue.js-based web applications. It has components for buttons, tables, modals, tabs and loads more. The documentation is very good, and despite using it extensively I have encountered very few problems. It’s a library that I often use in my projects, and use throughout my ePOS software Little Till.
For a while, the maintenance status of Bootstrap-Vue has been in question. Regular contributions stopped in early 2021, with the the original author, Pooya Parsa’s last contribution in May 2019. Latterly Jacob Müller made a lot of contributions, but has not been a regular presence since early 2021.
Boostrap-Vue has roughly 200,000 weekly downloads via npm.
Support for newer technologies
The biggest question are around support for newer Vue and Bootstrap libraries. Bootstrap-Vue requires Vue 2 and wraps Bootstrap v4, but newer versions of Vue and Bootstrap are now available.
Vue 3 has been available for some time, but the Vue team are a bit unclear about its status. As of January 1 2022, the documentation says this:
All of our official libraries and tools now support Vue 3, but some of them are still in beta or release candidate status.
Bootstrap v5 was marked as stable on May 5 2021.
Getting by in the dark
Throughout 2021 there was a lack of clarity regarding the future of Bootstrap-Vue. There are issues about this on GitHub (5507 5196) without any satisfactory resolution. The most active maintainer, Hiws, has been praised for providing helpful answers on GitHub and actively helping out on on the Bootstrap-Vue Discord. However, Hiws has stated clearly that he’s not interested in managing pull-requests or other code-based maintenance.
In response to discussions around Vue 3 and Bootsrap v5 support, Jacob Müller said in April 2021:
BootstrapVue is still maintained and will have Vue 3 and Bootstrap 5 support in the future. There will not be ETAs in the near future but it will definitely happen.
Sadly, that development work was never done and Hiws has had to repeatedly explain to people that the repository is unmaintained. In November, on Discord, Hiws said:
i tried pushing the maintainers back in april/may to put out a “The project is no longer actively maintained”, so people wouldn’t be waiting around for new updates and Vue 3 support when it was likely never coming any time soon. But i kept getting told “We will start again soon”, but soon never happened.
Without input from either Pooya Parsa or Jacob Müller very little has happened and the conversations did not lead far. Even with a potential budget of roughly $20,000 raised using OpenCollective, there was nobody to take the lead on the project.
Bring on the forks
As often happens when a beloved open source project is clearly abandoned, forks spring up.
Here’s a list of the forks that I am aware of.
Illya Klymov’s fork targeting Vue 3’s Migration Build, with Bootstrap v4, created in November 2021 - discussed here: https://github.com/xanf/bootstrap-vue/tree/vue3-compat-build
Carlos Bonadeo’s fork targeting Vue 3, Boostrap v5 and Typescript: https://github.com/cdmoro/bootstrap-vue-3
Carlos’s fork appears to be a complete rewrite that attempts to match the Bootstrap-Vue API. It’s documentation states NOT PRODUCTION READY and critically it appears to be missing a table component.
Also of note is a recently released library targeting Bootstrap v5 and Vue 3, but which does not appear to attempt any API compatibility with the original Bootstrap-Vue project: https://coreui.io/bootstrap-vue/.
In my view, given that there is no attempt to maintain API compatibility with Bootstrap-Vue, it is confusing that CoreUI have decided use this name, even if it’s the most obvious choice for a project combining Bootstrap and Vue.
A new era dawns
Things took a more positive turn on 14 December 2021 when Pooya resurfaced with this comment:
Thanks for starting to work on vue3 support @xanf @cdmoro 💚 If you would like to dedicate more time, I can invite you to org, and also we have funds available in open-collective.
Subsequently Carlos Bonadeo (cdmoro) and Illya Klymov (xanf) were made maintainers of the Bootstrap-Vue repository. Since then Illya has got on with some basic tidy up and merging of simple pull requests.
The latest update is contained in this pinned issue: https://github.com/bootstrap-vue/bootstrap-vue/issues/6872
TL; DR
New maintainers are here
Pull requests will be reviewed within several days
There will be a new release of bootstrap-vue coming with fixes included
Primary goal of the team is to rewrite bootstrap-vue to support Vue 3 and Bootstrap v5. We will do this in a separate repository. We will announce the detailed roadmap for a rewrite as soon as we have it