Angular Zoneless

Just to clarify. Removing the dependence on zone.js is still listed as an "experimental" feature in angular 18 and all components in your app must operate effectively as "On Push", and can't use things like NgZone.onStable .

Do all the telerik kendo angular components comply with this?  I tried turning it off in an existing app and many pages didn't work, but before we try to migrate anything that heavily relies on kendo components, I wanted to make sure kendo components also work in a project with no zone.js

So if we want to develop a zoneless application, we won't be able to use kendo?  It seems like that conflicts with your stated goal, because then you're not supporting the most recent version of angular.

I don't understand why you need to wait until Angular no longer supports versions that require Zone.js.  If all your components are effectively On Push, they will work in both new zoneless and legacy angular applications.   It's not like you updating to components that work in a zoneless environment would make them not work in older versions of angular.  Waiting until angular 22 or whatever when zone.js is completely not supported anymore doesn't seem like the right time to start supporting a feature that's available experimentally now and will be the recommended development path for new projects pretty soon.

Hi Noah,

We completely understand your point regarding this matter and how the lack of support for ZoneLess Change Detection in the Kendo UI for Angular components may cause some inconvenience in your application. 

However, typically we follow Angular's support policy and schedule, which means that we try to provide day-one support for the latest major Angular version and keep maintaining those under long-term support (LTS). Therefore, since currently, the actively supported and LTS releases of Angular include such that still rely on Zone.js, it would be difficult to introduce support for Zoneless Change Detection in the Kendo UI for Angular packages.

To be more comprehensive, due to the fact that there are remaining supported Angular versions, which are dependent on Zone.js, introducing Zoneless support for the Kendo UI for Angular library would require an impractical approach like releasing two separate versions of our packages for example. One version would need to be suitable for Angular versions with Zone.js dependence and the other one should be adapted for the new Zoneless Change Detection concept. 

With the above being said, Zoneless Change Detection support for the Kendo UI for Angular packages may be introduced in the future, but not until the support for all Angular versions that still rely on Zone.js is dropped.

Regards,
Zornitsa
Progress Telerik

Hi Noah,

Due to the support of Angular v15 and v16, we currently cannot provide support for zoneless components.

The Kendo components are compatible with Angular v18, however, some of the newly introduced features such as zoneless cannot be provided yet because of the aforementioned reason.

Migrating to zoneless components will require significant refactoring on our end, especially in more complex and composite components (Grid, Gantt, Spreadsheet, Editor, ...) or other scenarios that require the integration of several components.

To make all Kendo components zoneless several main types of refactoring should be done in every package such as ensuring every component uses the "OnPush" change detection strategy, every Input/dynamic option is reactive (by using Signals), removing all Zone-related APIs and replace them with new Angular ones or generic TypeScript/JavaScript as necessary and finally adapt all Unit and E2E tests accordingly, possibly introduce new ones as necessary.

To answer directly to the initial question - Is there support for or plans to support zoneless angular?  

There is no support for zoneless components yet and we also don't have a specific plan for when the component will start supporting zoneless configuration.

There is no doubt that the support for zoneless components required a huge amount of effort on our side and we understand the benefits of such refactoring. We are excited about it and we are eager to see the performance boost that will come up with such an effort. But considering the amount of work, and the fact that we are still supporting versions that are stopping us from working on this task, the support of zoneless components cannot be provided immediately. 

I hope this sheds some more light on that case.