ioredis vs node-redis

[chasemcdo]

I've been working with Redis for a couple projects, more specifically with Redis Sentinel. I had originally been using the node-redis package, but found it was lacking support for Sentinel. As such we migrated to ioredis in search of this support.

I am wondering why both packages exist and if there is any documentation on how someone might decide between the two if they are both supported?

[artur-ma]

I belive ioredis is not maintained anymore, it was non-RedisLabs related opensource project developed by @luin but then couple of months ago it moved under redis (RedisLabs) organization , they have no reason to maintain both node-redis and ioredis, so ioreids will be deprecated soon I belive

They also plan to create adapter ioredis => node-redis, for easier migration https://github.com/redis/node-redis/issues/2562

[akirarika]

Is this true? Oh my goodness.

I'm not intentionally trying to cause anxiety, but I noticed in the documentation that ioredis specifically mentions Alibaba (a Chinese e-commerce company similar to Amazon) as a user, and the author is also Chinese. I suspect the author is from Alibaba and the initial intention was to serve Alibaba.

However, Alibaba's open-source projects have had some maintenance issues. For example, Weex, a project similar to React Native, was transferred to Apache. After years of lack of maintenance, the project retired from the Apache Incubator. You can see it here:

https://incubator.apache.org/projects/weex.html

I read comments on Zhihu (a Chinese Q&A platform) saying that Alibaba's open-source projects are open-sourced to meet Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Once the responsible person is promoted or leaves, the project becomes neglected and then transferred to others, hoping to receive maintenance from the community.

So when ioredis was transferred to Redis, it made me concerned. I hope the Redis team can come forward and explain that ioredis will still receive active maintenance. Otherwise, I will be forced to migrate to node-redis, which is a very painful thing.

Hopefully, this is just me worrying unnecessarily.

[microdou]

@akirarika According to a recent post on X that "ioredis is 'acquired by' / 'sold to' redis", which is indirectly confirmed by ioredis author.

It doesn't seem to be a passive transfer. Personally I think ioredis is in good hands :)