Publish Neutralinojs 2024 roadmap

Author: shalithasuranga

blog/2024-01-01-neutralinojs-2024-roadmap.md

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+---
+title: Neutralinojs 2024 Roadmap
+authors: [shalithasuranga]
+slug: neutralinojs-2024-roadmap
+tags: [neutralinojs, javascript, framework, roadmap]
+image: media/cover-neutralinojs-roadmap-2024.png
+---
+
+![](media/cover-neutralinojs-roadmap-2024.png)
+
+
+At the end of every year, we typically publish a new blog post about the annual achievements and plans
+of the Neutralinojs project. In the past few years, we published the roadmap article at the end of each
+year, but from 2024 onward we'll bring this post to you at the beginning of every upcoming year to start
+each new year with fresh plans by looking back at the previous year. So, here is the review of 2023 and plans
+for the brand-new 2024!
+
+We could publish seven remarkable framework releases, nine neu CLI releases, and seven client library
+releases with new features and stability enhancements by fulfilling the developer community's needs in 2023.
+
+<!--truncate-->
+
+## Achievements in 2023
+
+Core maintainers and the friendly community accomplished the following achievements in the last year:
+
+- Published the Neutralinojs client library as an NPM package:  [`@neutralinojs/lib`](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@neutralinojs/neu)
+- Introduced a new inbuilt file watcher API for subscribing to file system events
+- Improved the filesystem API by adding binary file-handling support to the `openFile` function
+- Extended native window features by adding window startup positioning and persistent window state
+- Added a way to extend the default user agent string within the window mode
+- Implemented multiple development/production config files support with a new command-line option
+- The neu CLI program now has better, productive frontend library support with automatic command invocations,
+i.e., running the frontend library's development server automatically with `neu run`
+- Stabilized and improved the framework by improving the codebase, enhancing existing stable
+APIs, and fixing bugs reported by the developer community
+
+## Project growth
+
+In 2021, our goal was to stabilize the framework to help the community build production-level apps.
+In 2022, stable features, API enhancements, security improvements, and DevOps implementations made
+Neutralinojs a high-quality, production-grade solution for all cross-platform desktop app developers.
+Now, most medium-sized companies, startups, freelancers, and individual developers choose Neutralinojs
+over other popular frameworks due to its simplicity, lightweightedness, productivity, and active community support. 
+
+We'll keep adding developer-focused productivity features, app development features, and
+security/performance-related enhancements to compete with other cross-platform desktop app development
+frameworks.
+
+
+## Community
+
+Without the support from the community, it's undoubtedly impossible to bring Neutralinojs to the current level.
+The Neutralinojs developer community supported Neutralinojs development by reporting bugs, suggesting
+project enhancement ideas, submitting code contributions, and reporting security vulnerabilities.
+We are certainly glad to see the new developers' engagement with the Neutralinojs journey.
+
+Here are some highlighted community statistics:
+
+- 7.2k GitHub stargazers in the framework repository (15% increment)
+- 1.2k+ Discord members (~40% growth)
+- 134k+ neu CLI downloads on NPM (~65% growth)
+- 15k+ client library downloads on NPM within a year
+
+Popular developer newsletters like [JavaScript Weekly](https://javascriptweekly.com) and
+[Node Weekly](https://nodeweekly.com) helped us
+reach more JavaScript app developers by broadcasting Neutralinojs releases to tech experts.
+Developers helped us spread the news about Neutralinojs by posting blog posts and YouTube videos.
+Some app developers supported Neutralinojs by becoming sponsors!
+
+## Sponsors and finance
+
+MacStadium and Microsoft supported Neutralinojs with cloud infrastructure within the last year:
+MacStadium offered us a free Mac mini instance, and Microsoft offered us free Azure sponsorship
+credits to run a Windows 10 virtual machine. Unfortunately, our Azure sponsorship ended in 2023,
+but we'll apply for the sponsorship program again.
+
+Seven paid members support the Neutralinojs author via Patreon to allocate more time for
+the project maintenance-related tasks. We appreciate every donator's support and hope you'll be with us during this year.
+
+As mentioned in [this article](https://neutralino.js.org/docs/contributing/about-neutralinojs#financial-perspective)
+, the original author and the core developer team have no plans to monetize
+the Neutralinojs project with paid services and revenue-oriented licensing models. We'll never strive to
+build a commercial project around Neutralinojs. Our only lifelong goal is to maintain the Neutralinojs
+project as a fully-featured, purely FOSS, transparent, cross-platform desktop app development
+solution that follows the donation-based financial model.
+
+## Roadmap 2024
+
+In the last few years, we improved the project as a stable, simple, productivity-first
+desktop app development framework with basic features that every developer seeks. 2024's plan
+is to compete with other popular desktop app development frameworks with fully featured native APIs, tools, and
+developer resources, as explained in the following milestones:
+
+- Compose a detailed guide for creating cross-platform app bundles (not installers) 
+- Create a new page in the official documentation for listing community projects 
+- Release the [Neutralinojs builder](https://github.com/neutralinojs-community/neutralinojs-builder) community
+project with GSoC 2024. This project will help app developers create platform-dependent installers (i.e., Debian
+installers for GNU/Linux systems) for Neutralinojs apps via the neu CLI
+- Using cross-platform C++ file system APIs instead of platform-specific functions within
+ the framework source code, introduce new file system APIs based on C++ file system functions
+- Delivering features requested by the developer community
+
+Apart from the above milestones, we'll add more APIs, features, and developer tooling to compete with
+other cross-platform frameworks since our framework core is now stable.
+
+Join our [Discord server](https://discord.gg/cybpp4guTJ) and become a member of our developer community.
+Consider making a monetary donation if you would like to support the project financially.
+Consider making a code contribution and becoming a project committer if you wish to donate your
+time to Neutralinojs.
+
+Send us a pull request to [this GitHub repository](https://github.com/neutralinojs/neutralinojs.github.io)
+if you would like to list your app on the [Neutralinojs apps page](https://neutralino.js.org/apps).
+
+Thanks for reading.
+
+Build an app with Neutralinojs today&mdash;feel its simplicity
+