Meteor 1.6. Review: Benefits, Issues, and Examples

Meteor 1.6

Meteor 1.6. is already here. Apiko team has tested it on practice and now we want to share these findings with you.

Let’s dive right in!

Main changes in Meteor 1.6. version

• A new, stable, and long term support version of NodeJS (migrated from 4.8.3 to 8.8.1).
• Reduced app size, because there is no need to use a lot of babel plugins (new node have already implemented a lot of ES 2017 features)
• Npm is upgraded to v5 — the fastest npm version at the moment.
• Native debugging feature (now, we can use Chrome devtools to run application in debug mode)

Main advantages

• Updating to Meteor 1.6 is very easy. Just run meteor update and it’s done.
• There are no problems with updating common and most used packages (Mongo, accounts, etc)

We have compared old and new Meteor while working on the current project. The results are the following.

• Meteor applications start much faster for development (on the example, the time is reduced by 20 seconds).

• Here is a comparison of npm package installation with npm v5 and yarn

• A comparison of project bundle size

Possible issues

• Problems with package-lock

There is an issue with package-lock file in npm 5 for 5.6.0. version. The problem is that different packages may be added to the operational systems, e.g. FSEvents on Mac OS.This package will be deleted as soon as the “Meteor npm install” is conducted. It leads to the conflicts while file merging with version control systems. However, in Meteor, npm will be renewed in 1.6.1 version, that’s why this can be ignored yet.

• Atmosphere packages are not fully compatible with Node V8.

Not all Meteor packages on Atmosphere that use npm dependencies function well enough. It happens because of the rapid changes in Node versions.

Some functions may be deleted from the updated version or the syntax may be partially changed. That’s why it will take some time until community will adapt its packages to updated Meteor. However, most of the frequently used packages are already adapted. In addition, you can directly use npm packages without Meteor-wrappers.

Wrapping up

We are so excited about new Meteor version and hope you feel the same.

In case you share our tech passion to Meteor, these articles will come in handy for you.

• Email Sending Using Meteor JS: Implementation Process and Email Templates
• How to Build Telegram Chat Bot With Meteor
• Meteor Apps and Source Code examples

Enjoy it and feel free to share with us your Meteor experience!

Originally published at apiko.com on December 27, 2017.