This doesn’t have much impact on resulting JS size, but it will
hopefully make merge conflicts much less frequent.
The CSS growth is a little higher (6.5% increase in size) but is not
material.
If this materially reduces the number of merge conflicts we have, by
letting the git merge tools resolve some dist file mergers, I think it
would be worth it.
Some example changes in file size:
bundle.js 290K -> 301K
vendor.js 1,325K -> 1,321K
bundle.css 628K -> 669K
* Rename bundles (prep for webpack optimisation)
This might or might not reduce the overall repo size,
because git can combine similar chunks in the newly generated files
* Optimise webpack build time
Consolidates bundles, since a separation of bundle-framework.js vs. bundle-legacy.js
vs. bundle-lib.js no longer makes sense - they're all loaded upfront anyway,
since we'll be introducing more react-powered logic alongside the "legacy" JavaScript.
By consolidating into fewer bundles, we give the optimisation scripts (UglifyJS)
more options to reduce the overall file size.
The main motivation for a vendor.js is to shorten rebuild times:
Most active development is happening in files required through bundle.js.
This commit drastically reduces the rebuild time for those changes (15s to 4s).
Multiple entry points can't result in a single bundle.css with a fixed filename, see
https://github.com/webpack/extract-text-webpack-plugin/issues/179
Until that's resolved, it's easier to keep the 'css' task separate in Webpack,
and have a single entry point for all CSS (bundle.scss).
Also partially reverting "Moved frontend assets into admin/ "module"",
which moved too many files: debug.css and install.css need to remain
as framework (not admin) deps. Split out into a separate `framework-css` Webpack
task in preparation for splitting off the module.
The JavaScript i18n functionality in SilverStripe is used in the CMS as well as form field implementations.
Form fields used to include their own JavaScript for usage outside of CMS. This now requires custom build tooling in a project.
Hence there's no need for an i18n shim (i18nx.js), since the CMS always uses i18n support.
We've removed the ability to directly reference JS and CSS files
for form fields and other SilverStripe features in favour of a common bundle built by Webpack.
The logical next step is to make the framework module free of frontend dependencies,
which should simplify its operation, and avoid another time intensive "npm install" on a module.
Used in iframe, so can't be rolled into other code.
Moved in admin/ since that's easier for now with Webpack entry points,
and we'll move all JS/CSS into admin/ anyway soon.
There's not a lot of benefit in packaging these separately in terms of initial CMS load size,
so let's simplify the setup. They'll eventually become lazy loaded chunks in a React-based setup
https://facebook.github.io/react/downloads.html says:
"By default, React will be in development mode. To use React in production mode, set the environment variable NODE_ENV to production (using envify or webpack's DefinePlugin). A minifier that performs dead-code elimination such as UglifyJS is recommended to completely remove the extra code present in development mode."
We've disabled this previously because it was interfering with JS sourcemaps and breakpoints.
After some spot tests, this no longer seems to be the case with webpack generated sourcemaps.
Responsibility for finding and referencing images and fonts is now
given to webpack. All the url references are now relative to the
component scss file, and point to font & images files in src/, rather
than assuming someone else will place them in dist.
This makes the source more modular, and makes it easier to, for
example, inline images are data URIs, or create a new build script that
builds several modules for a project in a single pass.
Workaround for bad font path in bundle.css:
ExtactTextPlugin didn’t work as well with a subfolder reference in the
filename. This is just a short-term fix and could probably be improved
to put bundle.css back in the styles subfolder.
Webpack handles images & fonts:
Responsibility for finding and referencing images and fonts is now
given to webpack. All the url references are now relative to the
component scss file, and point to font & images files in src/, rather
than assuming someone else will place them in dist.
This makes the source more modular, and makes it easier to, for
example, inline images are data URIs, or create a new build script that
builds several modules for a project in a single pass.
Clarify docs on spriting and webfonts:
We've decided to remove sprity since it comes with hundreds of dependencies,
and needs compilation within the "npm install" - dragging out the already overweight
install process, and making the resulting node_modules/ folder less portable between systems.
The bundle is generated by running “webpack” directly - gulp is no
longer needed as an intermediary. The resulting config is a lot shorter,
although more configuration is pushed into lib.js.
Modules are shared between javascript files as global variables.
Although this global state pollution is a bit messy, I don’t think it’s
practically any worse than the previous state, and it highlights the
heavy coupling between the different packages we have in place.
Reducing the width of the coupling between the core javascript and
add-on modules would probably be a better way of dealing with this than
replacing global variables with some other kind of global state.
The web pack execution seems roughly twice as fast - if I clear out my
framework/client/dist/js folder, it takes 13.3s to rebuild. However,
it’s not rebuilding other files inside dist, only the bundle files.
CSS files are now included from javascript and incorporated into
bundle.css by the webpack. Although the style-loader is helpful in some
dev workflows (it allows live reload), it introduces a flash of
unstyled content which makes it inappropriate for production.
Instead ExtractTextPlugin is used to write all the aggregated CSS
into a single bundle.css file. A style-loader-based configuration could
be introduced for dev environments, if we make use of the webpack live
reloader in the future.
Note that the following features have been removed as they don't appear to be
necessary when using Webpack:
- UMD module generation
- thirdparty dist file copying
LeftAndMain.js deps: Without it, ssui.core.js gets loaded too late,
which leads e.g. to buttons being initialised without this added behaviour.
