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Webpack 5

webpack.js.org

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Re: Webpack 5

#41

Post by nicoburns »

GordonS wrote: post #30
jebronie wrote: post #2

"There is a good chance that upgrading fails and you would need to give it a second or 3rd try." Sad that this has almost become the norm when developing in the modern javascript ecosystem. I dread touching those projects and creating one even more because stuff just rots away and your app might break in days, weeks or If you are lucky months. I'm sure there are better developers out there that can handle all of this…

I frequently have to rerun `npm i` when it fails for seemingly spurious reasons. We used to laugh at Windows years ago, when the solution was so often "turn it off and on again", but it's basically what you need to constantly do with tools like npm and webpack.

Yarn is much better in this regard. I'd thoroughly recommend it. It's drop-in compatible (except it will generate it's own lock file), so it's pretty easy to try it.

Re: Webpack 5

#42

Post by haar »

vmception wrote: post #7
jebronie wrote: post #2

"There is a good chance that upgrading fails and you would need to give it a second or 3rd try." Sad that this has almost become the norm when developing in the modern javascript ecosystem. I dread touching those projects and creating one even more because stuff just rots away and your app might break in days, weeks or If you are lucky months. I'm sure there are better developers out there that can handle all of this…

Oh thats because you are missing the specific version manager for each part of your build toolchain And dont forget to make a script that automatically sets the right versions of npm, webpack, and python all at once! This is fine, I am okay with the events that are unfolding currently.

I've been using ASDF (https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf) for a while now to manage each of the language (and sometimes build tool) versions for a folder/repo in a consistent manner. I'd definitely recommend taking a look at it.

Re: Webpack 5

#44

Post by faichai »

simonw wrote: post #34

I've been putting off learning Webpack for far too long. Can anyone provide some kind of a syllabus to help me figure out what there is to learn about it, starting from almost no knowledge at all? I feel like it's a critical enough piece of modern web infrastructure that it's worth me taking the time to fully understand how to use it and what it's capable of.

This pretty much nails the problem with Webpack in my view. It doesn't seem to be based on any kind of strong, logical, easy to understand core, but instead is comprised of lots of interwoven threads of magic that no-one really understands.

This makes any attempt to debug and solve problems with it a total nightmare, like crawling through a tar pit. You might make it, but you're gonna feel all sticky and dirty coming out the other side.

That said, kudos to the developers, I use it every day, but I wish it were a lot simpler.

Re: Webpack 5

#45

Post by throwanem »

SilasX wrote: post #14
throwanem wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way you avoid problems with a .0.0 release is by not upgrading to a .0.0 release. You would have to do that by hand; npm and yarn have been pinning major versions for a long time now, so that upgrade only happens when you do it by hand. So if you don't want to deal with breaking changes, all you have to do is nothing. Meantime webpack 4 is not going anywhere.

I'm reminded of when npm released 5.7.0 (which some got upgraded to automatically because it wasn't tagged as pre-release) and had a critical bug that deleted your system files. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16435305

Why? What on Earth do you imagine that having to do with this?

Re: Webpack 5

#47

Post by idointernet »

simonw wrote: post #34

I've been putting off learning Webpack for far too long. Can anyone provide some kind of a syllabus to help me figure out what there is to learn about it, starting from almost no knowledge at all? I feel like it's a critical enough piece of modern web infrastructure that it's worth me taking the time to fully understand how to use it and what it's capable of.

https://survivejs.com/webpack/

Re: Webpack 5

#48

Post by nwienert »

nicoburns wrote: post #40
sinker wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So far what I've been doing is keeping my webpack config as simple as possible ( But one of my big pet peeves is when you clone a project and the installation says all you need to do is run make install or npm i, but in reality requires 20 google searches and an hour of banging your head to get the project running and even then you end up with 50 cryptic warning messages in your terminal so you don't even know if you…

I've found that a slightly longer (~100 lines) webpack config allows me to use all the caching and fancy tricks I want and is still just as debuggable. I think the main thing is setting it up yourself so you know what all the plugins/settings do.

The key is don’t abstract it. No function builders, one big object with inline conditional spreads.

Re: Webpack 5

#49

Post by marcins »

bichiliad wrote: post #29
Waterluvian wrote: post #4

I’m scrolling and scrolling waiting for a paragraph that tries to sell me on why I’d bother and risk upgrading. I think the best I got were patch notes. Any good reason to upgrade?

The biggest thing I've been excited about is having an offline cache for fast recompilations. It'll make startup times a lot faster, which is a big improvement for developer experence (especially in larger codebases).

Up to a point, eventually when the code base is large enough you spend more time serialising/deserialising and passing things between workers that it can be faster to disable the cache.

Re: Webpack 5

#50

Post by peterangular »

ronaldj wrote: post #22
jebronie wrote: post #2

"There is a good chance that upgrading fails and you would need to give it a second or 3rd try." Sad that this has almost become the norm when developing in the modern javascript ecosystem. I dread touching those projects and creating one even more because stuff just rots away and your app might break in days, weeks or If you are lucky months. I'm sure there are better developers out there that can handle all of this…

Configuring the modern JS toolkit (webpack, Babel, your framework of choice, Jest, etc) is such a pain. I’ve been doing front-end for 10+ years. You’re probably not a bozo.

Same, and it's just layer on layer of extra tooling and complexity.

Typescript, Babel, Webpack, JSX, TSX, etc, etc.

It gets in the way of development as much as it helps.

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