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LoopBack 3 End-of-Life

· 3 min read
Raymond Feng
Miroslav Bajtoš
Diana Lau

Originally published on strongloop.com

LoopBack 3 is approaching its end-of-life at the end of the year for community support. For LoopBack 3 users, we hope the migration guide helps you migrate your applications to version 4.

At the same time, we understand you might still be using LoopBack 3 and/or in the process of migrating to LoopBack 4. For the next few months after the EOL date, we'll try to support the community in the following ways:

  • Helping the community to migrate: we will continue to help with questions on GitHub and Slack, but it will be on a best-effort basis.
  • Security vulnerabilities: Critical security fixes will be applied as needed by IBM API Connect.
  • New features: No features will be accepted.
  • Bugs: We are not going to actively fix any bugs reported by the community users. For critical bugs, maintainers will review and assess the risks of community-submitted PRs. If you’re planning to submit a fix, it’s the best to open a GitHub issue to discuss with the maintainers before proceeding.

Please note that the December 2020 end-of-life date is applicable to community support. If you are using LoopBack as part of the IBM API Connect v5 or v2018 product, check with the product announcement for its end-of-support schedule.

What Should I Do If I'm Still Using LoopBack 3?​

If you already have LoopBack 3 applications running in production, it is highly recommended for you to review the Understanding the differences between LoopBack 3 and LoopBack 4 page as mentioned in one of our older blog posts. There is also the migration guide helping you to migrate your LoopBack 3 applications incrementally.

What If I Cannot Migrate to LoopBack 4 Any Time Soon?​

Your LoopBack 3 applications will continue to work even after LoopBack 3 reaches end of life. There will be very minimal, if any, changes going into the codebase. In the case of addressing security vulnerabilities, you might need to fork the corresponding GitHub repos and apply security fixes. See this blog for the list of Node.js packages reaching end-of-life along with loopback repo.

Enriching LoopBack and its Community - You are Invited!​

Your contribution is important to make LoopBack a sustainable open source project. Here is what you can do:

Let's make LoopBack a better framework together!