Stop webpack from resolving symlinks to real folders

[iamandrewluca]

Webpack will not resolve symlinks to real folders
This allows to symlink into src folder
https://github.com/facebookincubator/create-react-app/issues?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+sort%3Aupdated-desc+symlinks

fixes: #3547 and others...
closes: #3689

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[gaearon]

If this was a panacea wouldn't it be enabled by default in webpack itself? What are the tradeoffs and downsides of this?

[iamandrewluca]

It seems that this option was added one year ago. Maybe it has default to true, to not break back compatibility. For Windows users can't have this I think. I can't find any downsides for now. Maybe folks from community know better what would break this.

webpack/enhanced-resolve@c2f517e

[iamandrewluca]

Having this, you could link uncompiled sources from outside of src into it, and have them compiled by Babel.

[iamandrewluca]

For now I dont't see symlink as a solution. Starting to get more problems.

[gaearon]

Can you elaborate? Would be helpful for future attempts.

[iamandrewluca]

I have to create 3 react apps (using create-react-app) with common frontend components.
I created common using storybook. For styling I extended bootstrap with sources (*.scss) also in common. I also have some static images and fonts in common. Development is working fine.

Some dependencies are as dev and peer.
I have them installed in common and each app#
react/react-dom/bootstrap/reactstrap

As my components sources are not compiled, installing common as npm dependency for app# will not work, because webpack and babel-loader excludes node_modules from compiling process and I get an error that I need an loader for that file type.
If I had my common parallel to my app# I couldn't include components using relative path because create-react-app does not allow importing outside src except node_modules (cap obvious) 😄 . Solution was to symlink node_modules/common into src/common

I ejected create-react-app, and disabled Webpack resolve.symlink and created symlink mentioned above. Now *.js files are compiled fine without errors.
Even with npm link everything is working fine. somepath/common -> node_modules/common -> src/common

Here comes styles/images/fonts 😃 .
In common I extend bootstrap this way. I have:

// src/scss/_buttons.scss
@import "~bootstrap/scss/buttons":
// ... my styles

// src/scss/_variables.scss
@import "~bootstrap/scss/variables":
// ... my vars

// src/font/font-faces.css
// src/font/font.ttf

// src/scss/bootstrap.scss
@import "../font/font-faces.css";
@import "variables";
@import "buttons";
// ... other imports

In app# I am compiling sass from common using create-react-app tutorial. Parallel compiling sass and js.
In app# I have src/index.scss that gets compiled to src/index.css and included in index.js

// src/index.scss
@import "~common/src/scss/bootstrap";

This import does not work. I have to make it relative to symlinked one src/common
And also get errors already from common imports they don't find ~bootstrap
Had to change them relative also in common to ../../node_modules/bootstrap.
But if I want to make this work also in dev mode, I have to keep same folder structure relative to node_modules in common and all app# (what a mess) 😆
Now everything works, I get compiled css, but now css-loader from create-react-app sees url to images and fonts, realtive to app#, and can't find them, I have to copy them manualy into each app#

In conclusion. As I already ejected create-react-app for symlinks.

• I will keep it this way, and add sass-loader and make it work, to find fonts and images.
• I will remove src/common symlink, and adapt babel-loader to include node_modules/common into build.
• Now I can also remove service worker fallback paths 😐

Also my coworkers that are mostly back end (Java) devs said that I am making kind of "bicycle" with all this symlinks. And would be better to compile common and publish it into our pirvate maven nexus, and install it from there.
But I am struggling about dev mode. Because now at beginning will be a lot of changes, and I don't want to compile and publish common ech time.
Was the idea to have all in one project and to have app#.js foreach app and change to index.js for at build time, but we have some limitations from maven side, As all 3 app# have to be build into diffrent jars

I have to integrate all this into maven build process and CI process.
Or to rethink all build process again.
Will be a fun weekend 😄

[gaearon]

All of this sounds like something that could be solved by #3741, no?