Angular v12, the latest version of Angular, is now generally available. The update brings the language closer to ‘Ivy Everywhere.’ The term refers to an approach where the Angular ecosystem is transitioned to the Ivy compiler.
Starting with Angular v12, View Engine is officially deprecated. Deprecation refers to when older code is removed since it no longer functions well or has been superseded by new better code.
In future releases, it will be completely removed. Current libraries using the View Engine will become compatible with Ivy apps.
What’s new under the hood?
In a blog post, Mark Techson who is the developer advocate for the Angular team recommends that library authors begin transitioning to Ivy. Another change in Angular v12 is that the team shift from legacy i18n message IDs.
Techson says that the legacy message IDs can cause issues stemming from whitespace formatting templates and ICU expressions.
The new message ID format will be more resilient and intuitive to reduce the needless translation invalidation and retranslation cost in apps where translations are not the same. Starting with Angular v11, new projects have been configured to automatically use the new message IDs.
New tools
On top of all that, there are tools for migrating existing projects with existing translations, according to Techson in the blog post.
Protractor, an Angular testing framework, is undergoing work to determine where it goes from here. Angular is still reviewing feedback and right now, will not make Protractor a part of new projects. Instead, it will help present developers with ways to adopt alternatives, by collaborating with WebDriverIO, TestCafe, and Cypress.
You can check out the host of new Angular v12 features on the official site to find out what’s new.