New Focus on ReScript
Background
In 2018, the Reason Association came into existence to work on the JavaScript related sentiment of the ReasonML toolchain (Reason & BuckleScript). Our most prominent work was the new unified documentation platform reasonml.org to unify all major documentation websites (BuckleScript, ReasonML and ReasonReact).
On July 1st 2020, BuckleScript unveiled its new syntax rewrite. On August 10th 2020, the project announced the new ReScript brand with a re-aligned core team and roadmap. The ReScript Association organized the new logo and design which was made public on August 27th, 2020.
Two of our board members, Cristiano Calcagno and Patrick Ecker, are now officially part of the ReScript core team. All our previous projects in 2018 and 2019 are now closed in favour of our new focus.
More details on the "why" of the rebrand and split from ReasonML can be found here.
Our Work in 2021
We will focus all our effort on the upcoming changes for the ReScript platform transition. This includes better editor integration, a JavaScript centric documentation platform and new @rescript/react releases.
We are also investing time in other tools like a documentation extraction binary that is completely independent from odoc (or other related OCaml infrastructure).
The project made every piece of the ReScript toolchain independent from its original OCaml roots. We are now able to align the ReScript community to a JavaScript centric workflow. ReScript and OCaml will continue to share the same AST and type system, so ReScript can be seen as a simpler derivative of OCaml with JavaScript like conventions.
Meanwhile, the documentation platform has improved greatly in accessibility. We added features that make content way more discoverable (e.g. the syntax lookup widget).
The goal is to create a single, cross-platform compatible toolchain that is easily installable via npm to provide the fastest compiler and build system in the JavaScript ecosystem.
Future Updates
All our progress is regularly announced in the ReScript forum and on Twitter here or here.
If your company relies on the ReScript platform for building commercial products, please consider supporting our Open Source efforts by sending a donation.