#Release planning

Sometimes an upcoming release needs a little extra planning (and help from the stylelint community) to make the transition as smooth as possible.

#8.0.0

In 8.0.0 we will be removing:

• the declaration-block-properties-order rule.

The declaration-block-properties-order rule will be replaced by stylelint-order, a community plugin pack of ordering rules. One that contains rules for ordering properties, property groups and other things within declaration blocks. Please consider contributing to stylelint-order to ensure it is robust and handles your particular use-case. This will provide a smoother transition to 8.0.0, once it is ready.

#7.0.0

In 7.0.0 we will be removing:

• the emptyLineBefore option from the declaration-block-properties-order rule.
• the hierarchicalSelectors option from the indentation rule.
• the -e and --extract CLI flags and the extractStyleTagsFromHtml node API option.

This is to ensure that development on the linter remains sustainable.

The declaration-block-properties-order rule will, as the name implies, check only the order of properties within a declaration block. It will not be concerned with whitespace between declarations. As such, the emptyLineBefore option within the "group objects" configuration feature, i.e:

[
  {
    "emptyLineBefore": "always",
    "properties": [
      "height",
      "width",
    ],
  }, {
    "emptyLineBefore": "always",
    "properties": [
      "color",
      "font",
    ],
  }
]

will be removed in 7.0.0. This is an opportunity for the community to develop a more powerful and open-ended plugin for specifying the structure of a block. There's also an opportunity to align such a plugin with an existing block sorting PostCSS plugin, e.g. postcss-sorting, which supports, amongst other things, specifying the order of nested rules and at-rules within a block.

The indentation rule will only check the more common use-case of block-level indentation. As such, the hierarchicalSelectors option will be removed. If you use the hierarchicalSelectors option please consider creating a plugin for this specific code style and sharing it with the community.

The -e and --extract flags and the extractStyleTagsFromHtml node API option will be replaced by an extensible processor system. If you currently use these flags or this option to extract CSS code from HTML files, please consider building a processor for the community.

All being well, the community will, if there is a need, create these plugins and processors while the stylelint team focuses on developing 7.0.0. This will provide a smoother transition to 7.0.0, once it is ready.