Backporting newer features to previous versions

[a60915]

Description

Hello, I was wondering what the general feeling is for backporting newer features to previous versions. I have seen that some features from v21 have been brought to v20. I am interested in contributing to this endeavor but wanted to gauge interest in accepting those types of PRs. I would prefer if it could be part of the main library, but if it can't be, then I would create it as it's own library.

I admit, I have a selfish interest in this, we are an older version of Sitecore and won't be able to upgrade for a while, so it would be nice to have access to these features today instead of a couple of years from now.

Additional information

No response

[pzi]

We are in a similar boat re: not in a position to upgrade for a little bit... I was wondering if you had specific features in mind?

[mjarosch]

@pzi Ideally, Pull Requests to back port features would be accepted to past versions. Hence my starting of this discussion to gauge support. Plan B would be to distribute this as an add-on library. Not sure how far back is feasible to support, but open to ideas.

I started working on a POC of this over the weekend.I am supporting a 10.2 instance, so adding support for Robots.txt, Redirects and Multisite using searches instead of sites is feasible.

I am running into issues where Typescript classes aren't "extendable", so back porting additions to those may take some creativity or may mean renamed replacements instead of enhancements in some cases.

[mjarosch]

@pzi Are there any particular features that you would be interested in?

[pzi]

Hey @mjarosch, I put together a rough wishlist with things that would suit us for our purposes :)

Unreleased

• On Demand ISR [nextjs/template][sitecore-jss-nextjs] On demand ISR #1674
• fast-deep-equal Support stylesheets for BYOC Unwrapped and SXA Components #1722
• sc_site cookie attr [NextJs] Add attributes to 'sc_site' cookie #1746

Released

• richtext links [sitecore-jss-nextjs] Internal link in RichText is broken when nested tags are added #1718
• prefetch link option in richtext [NextJS] Add prefetchLinks parameter to RichText component #1517
• model update for item type [sitecore-jss] Update models: Add url and id property to item type #1219
• any update to Link component
  • [react][nextjs] Fix double hash in anchor links #1375
  • [Next.js][React] Link component does not add anchor to the internal links #1226
  • [Next.js] Fix for Link component which throws error if field is undefined #1425
• image component fill prop [Next.js][Image] Exclude width/height when fill prop is provided #1336
• removal of getStaticProps/getServerSideProps [Next.js] Exclude ComponentProps functions from the client bundle #1753
• next 13/14 support (stretch goal ;) )

And in general, our cyber security is hounding us for updates of Axios :)

• update axios Please update axios #1343

[mjarosch]

@pzi how would you feel about a library that replaces the Sitecore jss library? Basically the jss codebase with back ports of graphql queries and other enhancements?

[pzi]

While the thought has crossed our minds as well, it would create quite a dependency on another community that's not "sitting within Sitecore" to keep it maintained in somewhat lock-step with this repo. Plus, in case there is an issue I am unsure how (Sitecore) support would look like given it's a 3rd party dep. In other words I'd be hesitant to replace this library but could probably get behind using it in addition to it (even though we'd potentially face similar issues). I'll ask around in our team to hear their thoughts.

[illiakovalenko]

@mike-jarosch-aw The primary challenge here is that backporting these features is not a straightforward task. As we move forward, we will also need to maintain support for them and increase QA efforts. I will bring this issue to the attention of our product, and we will provide you with a response soon.