In the MobX-State-Tree Core Team Meeting June 2023, we determined that the current monorepo structure isn't really how we want to work with the project moving forward. Right now, it creates more confusion and maintenance burden than value to us.

Easy removals

If you look in the packages directory, you'll see most of our sub-packages are MobX-State-Tree examples:

1. mst-example-bookshop
2. mst-example-boxes
3. mst-example-redux-todomvc
4. mst-example-todomvc

These examples could be removed and maintained separately. We might consider improving, updating, or adding to them in the future. But we don't need to hold on to them in the monorepo here.

Bigger lifts

mst-middlewares requires the most planning and forethought before removal, because people are using it in production, and using it alongside MST.

The README for that project does say:

The middlewares serve as example and are supported on a best effort bases. The goal of these middlewares is that if they are critical to your system, you can simply copy paste them and further tailor them towards your specific needs.

But we want to be respectful for folks who have come to rely on it. When we get around to removing it, we'll want to find a reasonable home for the middleware project, and make sure that the community has some support to use those middlewares. We may want to do some improvements, fixes, and update communication about those projects. Again, we think it makes sense to move the middleware(s) to their own homes to handle that kind of work.

Next steps

Our goal is to have the MobX-State-Tree repository slimmed down by January of 2024. Hopefully that work will clarify the scope of MST itself, make it easier for contributors to find their way around the project, and it'll make the maintainers' smiles just a little bigger.