[INFRA] Evaluate the Migration from mxGraph to maxGraph

[tbouffard]

Objective

This issue, a subtask of #3237 , aims to assess the feasibility and implications of replacing mxGraph with maxGraph.

The findings will support informed decisions regarding the viability and benefits of a full migration. This evaluation also aims to deliver actionable insights and establish a strong foundation for a potential transition to maxGraph.

Background

Community-Driven Project

• maxGraph is a community-driven open-source project with limited active maintainers.
• Two contributors involved in the initial migration from mxGraph have been inactive since January 2022.
• Process Analytics (PA) maintainers have control over the maxGraph codebase.
• Currently, I (@tbouffard) am the sole active maintainer, with occasional external contributions.
• Despite calls for contributors (e.g., #354), engagement has been minimal.

Popularity

• maxGraph has 857 stars on GitHub as of January 8, 2025.
• A few questions and issues are posted monthly, reflecting ongoing use.
• npm downloads are relatively low, averaging between 500 and 1,000 per week.

Features

• maxGraph, a fork of mxGraph, retains feature parity with its predecessor.
• It includes additional functionalities, such as features added directly by bpmn-visualization (e.g., color fill for arrow markers on edges).

Purpose of the Evaluation

1. Assess Migration Effort: Determine the complexity and time required for migration.
2. Detect Problems Early: Identify potential issues and blockers ahead of the migration.
3. Enhance the Codebase: Apply improvements to the master branch to simplify future migrations and strengthen tests.
4. Support the maxGraph Community: Provide feedback and propose fixes for issues encountered during the evaluation.
5. Reusability: Ensure that the effort can be reused in future pull requests to test new maxGraph releases.

Scope

• The evaluation will focus solely on code analysis.
• It will not include migrating the existing bpmn-visualization documentation referencing mxGraph.
• Pull requests will be created to test new maxGraph releases as they become available and as the bpmn-visualization code evolves.
• A summary of the latest pull request’s status will be documented here, along with a list of all pull requests made during the evaluation.

Evaluation followup

Created Pull Requests

• Pending: refactor: [POC] Replace mxGraph with maxGraph 0.10.x #3098
• refactor: [POC] investigate replacement of mxGraph by [email protected] (2nd attempt) #2756
• refactor: [POC] Replace mxGraph with maxGraph 0.1.0 #2366