Webpacker 6.x - Compatibility with Webpack 5

[pedrofurtado]

A great news, everyone! 🎉

Webpack v5 is ready: https://github.com/webpack/webpack/releases/tag/v5.0.0

Happy to see upgrade plans to this version 🥇

I can help with testing (not too much with code, in this particular case 😄)

[addamove]

Waiting...

[Ruff9]

It would help fix a lot of security issues introduced by webpack 4.44.2.
(for example : #2216)

[gauravtiwari]

Thanks @pedrofurtado

I am working towards a 6.0 release that will include Webpack 5 support but we are still a couple of weeks away.

[guillaumebriday]

@gauravtiwari If you need help, feel free to ping me 👍

I tried to upgrade a webpack-boilerplate to Webpack 5, and most of plugins and loaders are not compatible yet :/

I guess we must wait a bit.

[brentdodell]

@gauravtiwari, do you have a date that you'd like to have Webpack 5 support out? Are there a list of action items that need to happen to get it there?

[gauravtiwari]

Thanks, @guillaumebriday will definitely do

@brentdodell

The main goal with 6.0 is to make Webpacker leaner:

• Only JS support out of the box (inline with https://guides.rubyonrails.org/upgrading_ruby_on_rails.html#using-webpacker)
• Optional CSS/SASS support if dependencies are installed (css-loader or sass-loader or less-loader)
• Optional static assets support if file-loader is installed

optional features are basically like you would add haml-rails gem to use haml templating engine

which means we will move away from rake installers - erb, react etc. In my opinionm, installers don't do much anyway and anyone can simply follow the docs to add bunch of dependencies to get started (much better for learning).

We will document all installer steps in the docs. And, you can also use NPM, if needed.

---

I can't promise the exact date but Rails 6.1 RC is due soon (end of October/first week november) so hopefully around that time.

[gauravtiwari]

@pedrofurtado wondering if we can remove the title of the issue to reflect Webpacker 6.0 instead of Webpack 5?

[pustovalov]

one of the blockers:

webpack-assets-manifest - currently doesn't support webpack 5, webdeveric/webpack-assets-manifest#59 (comment)

[guillaumebriday]

I opened a PR to remove the installers here: #2797

Please let me know if I need to change something

[anark]

Any news on this? It looks like webpack-asset-manifest is close to a webpack 5 compatible release.

I also think removing the css stuff(and postcss), file loaders, and the installers and making webpacker default to js only and other options be opt in would be a great change

[gauravtiwari]

thanks @anark I will check if it's good to go but I didn't see any new release for webpack 5?

@guillaumebriday thanks for the PR and help, I really appreciate it. Sorry, I didn't publish my work, which has similar changes to yours but others like documentation and optional support for those installers.

I will review the state of my work and try to publish a PR later this week.

[guillaumebriday]

Ok great! I didn't write documentation because I wasn't sure how guys you wanted to see in it. That's why my PR is in draft state 👍

By optional support for those installers, you want something like Laravel Frontend Preset? Extract installers in dedicated gems?

[n-rodriguez]

@pustovalov webpack-asset-manifest has been updated : https://github.com/webdeveric/webpack-assets-manifest/releases/tag/v4.0.0

[webdeveric]

I published webpack-assets-manifest v5 and it supports webpack 5. There were lots of updates in v4 and v5 and a couple breaking changes so please read the release notes.

[pedrofurtado]

Hey, guys! I will close this issue because webpack 5 is now supported in master branch, and it is available in latest 6.x release (at this moment is v6.0.0.beta.3) 🎉

Thanks the help of all 🤝

[gsouf]

Hi @pedrofurtado is the v6-beta stable enough atm?

Thanks

[pedrofurtado]

Hi @gsouf ! 🍻 The 5.x is stable, the 6.x may contain some more additional breaking changes 👍

[olivierlacan]

Hi @gsouf ! 🍻 The 5.x is stable, the 6.x may contain some more additional breaking changes 👍

@pedrofurtado Would that be breaking changes upgrading from Webpacker 5.x to 6.x or actual breaking issues in Webpacker 6.x/master? Curious and willing to help squash any outstanding issues by the way.