CI4 release date coming

What we have to do now as CodeIgniter developers is create a good ecosystem creating nice libraries, packages, etc. and make people use it.

You've nailed it.

It's the endless list of plug-ins and constant PR push that has made Laravel grow as fast and as big as it has.

IMHO CodeIgniter is much better tool for a lot of things, but it'll take some brute force effort to make it relevant again

So you guys are suggesting creating tools that are codeigniter specific instead of using composer for packages that anyone can use?

Codeigniter is simply one of the tools you need to learn to be a successful developer. Always add more tools to your coding arsenal!