Inlang’s Refactor: New Project Format, SDK, and Marketplace

Architecture

• New capabilities for the ecosystem by changing the config format from JS to JSON.
  • Apps can now perform CRUD operations to add modules, change language tags, and more.
• The new concept of a “Project”.
  • Everything inlang related like messages, lints, installed plugins, etc. is now bundled in a project.
  • Foundation to support multiple projects like iOS and Android apps in one repository in the future.
• Building inlang apps got substantially easier with a new inlang SDK.
  • loadProject is the new entry point that bundles query, linting, module resolution, and more in one function.
  • Reactive by default, which auto updates your apps.
• New message format with variants that enable any advanced use case.
  • Pluralization
  • Gender
  • A/B testing
  • And more
• Developing message lint rules and plugins became simpler.
  • A default export is all you need.
  • You can use the CLI to build plugins and lint rules. No more custom esbuild config.

Editor

• Realtime linting and message update
• Autosaving for faster workflows

Visual Studio Code extension (Sherlock)

• Faster startup time & Realtime linting and message update
• Auto migration of inlang.config.js to project.inlang.json
• Better error handling

Marketplace

• Find apps, libraries and modules for your project
• Have the opportunity to distribute your own inlang-based product
• Install modules directly from the store

CLI

• Performance improvements
• New command “project migrate” to easily migrate your config file to json.
• New command “module init” & “module build” to simplify module development

Lix (former Project Lisa)

• We finally gave our library for data fetching and versioning “Project Lisa” a real name: lix
• Lix will be git-compatible but light weight and support lazy operations. It will be the foundation for inlang apps
• With lix, our vision is to build a revamped version control system that is built for the web and with UX & DX in mind. This will bring a lot of improvements & benefits to our ecosystem and we can’t wait to show more

Paraglide JS (former SDK-JS)

• Ivan Hofer passed away, the project lead of the sdk-js
• The sdk-js will be renamed to paraglide js, a major hobby of Ivan Hofer
• We decided to refrain from a refactor of the sdk-js due to
  1. double migration risk
  2. the refactor might break existing apps
• The team invested multiple days into getting the sdk-js running with the new architecture. However, we are not confident that we are not going to break existing apps
• As long as you keep your inlang.config.js, the sdk-js should work as expected.
• We are working with “hochdruck” (high pressure) on providing a stable paraglide js library
• Dominik Göpel continues working on built-in capabilities for SvelteKit i18n routing