Build executor: class name minification should be optional when using optimization: true

[alexd6631]

Current Behavior

Since 13.4, when building for production with optimization on, it also minify the class names causing a variety of issues with library depending on reflection.

There are several issues already reported :

• Broken Nest.js app when migrating from 13.2.x to 13.4.x #8446
• TypeOrm query will failed if the configuration optimization for production set to true #8441

Expected Behavior

When building for production, class name minification should be easily configurable and opt-out in build settings, so we can have the same behavior as 13.2.
Disabling optimization could be a workaround, but it also disable the process.env.NODE_ENV substitution, which is problematic in my case

Steps to Reproduce

Create a simple node js app, it should generate a production configuration.

"configurations": {
        "production": {
          "optimization": true,
          "extractLicenses": true,
          "inspect": false,
          "fileReplacements": [
            {
              "replace": "apps/server/src/environments/environment.ts",
              "with": "apps/server/src/environments/environment.prod.ts"
            }
          ]
        }
      },

Build as usual :
npx nx build --configuration=production

Inspect the output main.js in dist/ : class names are minified

Environment

Node : 16.13.1
 OS   : darwin arm64
 npm  : 8.1.2
 
 nx : 13.4.4
 @nrwl/angular : undefined
 @nrwl/cli : 13.4.4
 @nrwl/cypress : 13.4.4
 @nrwl/devkit : 13.4.4
 @nrwl/eslint-plugin-nx : 13.4.4
 @nrwl/express : undefined
 @nrwl/jest : 13.4.4
 @nrwl/linter : 13.4.4
 @nrwl/nest : 13.4.4
 @nrwl/next : undefined
 @nrwl/node : 13.4.4
 @nrwl/nx-cloud : undefined
 @nrwl/react : undefined
 @nrwl/react-native : undefined
 @nrwl/schematics : undefined
 @nrwl/tao : 13.4.4
 @nrwl/web : undefined
 @nrwl/workspace : 13.4.4
 @nrwl/storybook : undefined
 @nrwl/gatsby : undefined
 typescript : 4.5.4
 rxjs : 7.5.2
 ---------------------------------------
 Community plugins:
        @angular/animations: 13.1.2
        @angular/cdk: 13.1.2
        @angular/common: 13.1.2
        @angular/compiler: 13.1.2
        @angular/core: 13.1.2
        @angular/forms: 13.1.2
        @angular/material: 13.1.2
        @angular/platform-browser: 13.1.2
        @angular/platform-browser-dynamic: 13.1.2
        @angular/router: 13.1.2
        @ngrx/effects: 13.0.2
        @ngrx/entity: 13.0.2
        @ngrx/router-store: 13.0.2
        @ngrx/store: 13.0.2
        @ngrx/store-devtools: 13.0.2
        @angular-devkit/build-angular: 13.1.3
        @angular/compiler-cli: 13.1.2
        @angular/language-service: 13.1.2

[bilalshaikh42]

We are also running into this issue. I am not sure what optimization does other than minify class names/variables. But if there are other features, it would be useful to be able to have optimized builds while not breaking the reflection due to changes in the class names.
This is needed for a whole bunch of things in NestJs including OpenApi generation, class validation, database validation, input parsing, etc.

[alexd6631]

I investigated a bit, it seems a possible quick fix would be to configure TerserPlugin to not mangle names in node.config.ts

const TerserPlugin = require('terser-webpack-plugin');
...
 if (options.optimization) {
        webpackConfig.optimization = {
            minimize: true,
+            minimizer: [new TerserPlugin({
+                terserOptions: {
+                    mangle: false
+                },
+              })],
            concatenateModules: true,
        };
    }

I can make a PR of the quick fix if necessary, but Nx core dev team might want to expose the terserOptions in the build settings (so some users can still mangle the names and customize minification for production) so it would be more involved than this.

[alexd6631]

Hey,
I just wrapped the previous code in a PR, let's see how it get reviewed :)

[Tadjaur]

It seems that this solution does not work on my side.
After creating a custom webpack configuration that sets the environments variable (.env file) in a nestjs project, typeorm requests fail again.
After some research, I finally set optimization.minimize to false on webpackconfig.
Since this is a server project, I don't really need minification.

[github-actions]

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