The Future of this Plugin vs. Mini CSS Extract Plugin (=> Use Mini CSS Extract Plugin)

[garygreen]

The last release was nearly a month ago.

• Is this plugin actively developed anymore?
• Where are the maintainers?
• What's happening with Webpack 4 support? There are a number of major problems reported with this plugin: 4.0.0-beta.0 adding a loader changes the order of generated CSS #745, [4.0.0-beta.0] hangs when using webpack 4 #743, [4.0.0-beta.0] Extracted text only output commons.css instead of separated css files when using optimization.splitChunks #742, [4.0.0-beta.0] emitting empty CSS files when using dynamic import #738, [4.0.0-beta.0] Extracted text being moved to the runtime chunk when using optimization.runtimeChunk #735, [4.0.0-alpha.0] Webpack runtime code in extracted css files #726
• Is the aim for this plugin to become redundant and instead use the Mini Css Extract Plugin?

Could we have some official responses and guidance from the maintainers please.

[alexander-akait]

@garygreen here, some problems very difficult to fix and somebody of us don't have many time. Mini Css Extract Plugin is PoC future webpack build-in css support and yes for webpack@4 it is the best choice than ETWP. ETWP have a lot of arch issues for historical reasons. PR welcome if you know how fix any issue(s) from you above issue.

P.S. I can take care about this only through 2 week.

[garygreen]

Mini Css Extract Plugin is PoC future webpack build-in css support
ETWP have a lot of arch issues for historical reasons. PR welcome if you know how fix any issue(s) from you above issue.

It doesn't make sense to contribute to a plugin which, by the sounds of it, is becoming redundant?

If the official aim is to have css extraction built into Webpack thru the Mini Extract plugin, should support for Webpack 4 not be phased out of ETWP? If this was official, it would clear up all the Webpack 4 issues in this repository and also create a clear direction for where things should be heading.

[alexander-akait]

@garygreen plugin just don't support webpack@4 but for webpack@3 it is good solution for extract. Mini Css Extract Plugin only works for webpack@4, we should still support this plugin, because many of people still use webpack@3. Official aim will be ship with webpack@4 docs and roadmap.

[alexander-akait]

Anyway we are open for PR to support webpack@4 before css will be support in webpack.

[garygreen]

I wasn't suggesting dropping support for webpack@3, of course it's still will be supported.

Official aim will be ship with webpack@4 docs and roadmap.
Anyway we are open for PR to support webpack@4 before css will be support in webpack.

This is giving mixed signals. You either should 1) move in a direction to support Mini Css Extract, or 2) work alongside it and dilute the community/development of both plugins. Option 2 is one you are suggesting, and it's not a good one, IMO.

These are steps I believe would help move things in the right direction:

• State in the Readme that ETWP only supports webpack@3 (there are too many bugs even in the beta version to encourage users to use it)
• Add a link to the Mini Css Extract Plugin for webpack@4 users and encourage support of the plugin there.
• Close issues relating to webpack@4 and link them to Mini Css Extract plugin, any missing functionality or PRs I'm sure would be welcome for discussion there.

[vladshcherbin]

@garygreen proposed solution sounds very reasonable, switched to mini-css-extract-plugin and webpack 4 in a few minutes.

[michael-ciniawsky]

TL;DR Use mini-css-extract-plugin instead :)

The webpack >= v4.0.0 'support' for extract-text-webpack-plugin was moved to mini-css-extract-plugin as more lightweight approach for webpack >= v4.0.0 and ETWP entered maintenance mode. We are sorry for the inconvenience here, but ETWP reached a point where maintaining it become too much of a burden and it's not the first time upgrading a major webpack version was complicated and cumbersome due to issues with ETWP. The mid-term plan is integrate CSS support directly into webpack to avoid this kind of issue in the future

[michael-ciniawsky]

I leave this issue open for visibility until I have the chance to npm deprecate and reflect this in the README properly. So please don't close yet :)

[dfleury]

For the most of cases use mini css extract plugin maybe a choice but, I've a heavy use case of webpack and I've been using ETWP to extract not just css but tiny js files too.

Well, I pretty disappointed. Can't you just put ETWP to work with webpack 4 and break compatibility webpack 3? This way you can put ETWP 3.x to match with webpack 3 only and set it to maintenance mode. I saw this is exactly the same thing you guys did on webpack 1, 2 and 3.

Maybe the biggest arch issue which need to be solved is to accept the webpack's breaking change nature and transform ETWP in a set of tools not coupled webpack specific arch version but one which can be applied to any of it.

How about it?

ps.: Please, don't get me wrong, I'm not meaning that the problem you guys are trying to solve is a simple/easy thing.

[andriijas]

@dfleury just stick with webpack 3 until you feel comfortable of letting go of ETWP.

Basically ETWP has always managed to get around by using hacks, upgrading it properly to work with the new APIs in webpack 4 basically means rewriting it as MiniCSSExtractPlugin.

Everyone have limited time and effort, its better to redirect the energy on building stable future proof solutions rather than putting a lot of time and effort maintaining the past.

[alexander-akait]

@dfleury main problem in extract - difference type of assets (html, css, txt, markdown and many etc) have difference logic on loading page, example for css is very important save order loading, for html is very important inject in right place, for some case also importing order loading, also each extraction require some additional options for control this. And it is all do ETWP is very bigger and not universal with very buggy behavior. We should have for each type of asset own implementation extraction, future ETWP is just extract assets from bundle and all, without any features (it will be in near future as major release). If you have some assets which should be extract and you have problem with this please write about here, we will search solution. Thanks!

[alexander-akait]

DEPRECATED
Please use: https://github.com/webpack-contrib/mini-css-extract-plugin