Release 2.22.0

[glasser]

As with release PRs in the past, this is a PR tracking a release-x.y.z branch for an upcoming release of Apollo Server. 🙌 The version in the title of this PR should correspond to the appropriate branch.

Check the appropriate milestone (to the right) for more details on what we hope to get into this release!

The intention of these release branches is to gather changes which are intended to land in a specific version (again, indicated by the subject of this PR). Release branches allow additional clarity into what is being staged, provide a forum for comments from the community pertaining to the release's stability, and to facilitate the creation of pre-releases (e.g. alpha, beta, rc) without affecting the main branch.

PRs for new features might be opened against or re-targeted to this branch by the project maintainers. The main branch may be periodically merged into this branch up until the point in time that this branch is being prepared for release. Depending on the size of the release, this may be once it reaches RC (release candidate) stage with an -rc.x release suffix. Some less substantial releases may be short-lived and may never have pre-release versions.

When this version is officially released onto the latest npm tag, this PR will be merged into main.

[glasser]

I've released v2.22.0-alpha.0.

This release only contains #4981, but I'm pretty excited about that change.

Before releasing, @abernix and I will finish our conversation about sample code and top-level await from that PR's review.

To test it:

First, install the alpha in your app by installing v2.22.0-alpha.0 of whatever Apollo Server packages your app directly depends on. This might look something like

npm i apollo-server-express@2.22.0-alpha.0 apollo-server-core@2.22.0-alpha.0

If you're using the apollo-server package (and calling listen()), that should be enough.

Otherwise, if you're using (say) apollo-server-express, you'll want to insert a call to await server.start() between server = new ApolloServer and server.applyMiddleware. This does mean you'll want to be setting up your server in a context where you can await (an async function, the top level in a .mjs file, etc). This call is technically optional but you don't get the improved error handling if you don't do it!

If you're using a serverless package like apollo-server-lambda, this doesn't fully improve the situation, though I'd still be interested in hearing about how it works for you.

Please provide feedback on this PR.

More details at https://www.apollographql.com/docs/apollo-server/api/apollo-server/#start (though oops, the docs shouldn't be up until the API is in a non-alpha version, so if this doesn't get released pretty soon I might roll that back).

[glasser]

This is released as Apollo Server v2.22.0!