Misleading webpack configuration

[herrvigg]

Documentation Is:

• Missing
• Needed
• Confusing
• Not Sure?

Please Explain in Detail...

I don't think it's a good suggestion to define the webpack configuration as such:

  optimization: {
    minimize: true,
    minimizer: [new CssMinimizerPlugin()],
  },

Problem: the default JS minimizer (Terser) will not be invoked anymore and i don't know how to invoke it without installing it explicitly... It goes against common sense to disable a much wanted behavior especially since this plugin is also about minimization.

Your Proposal for Changes

It seems enough to instantiate an object like this:

    plugins: [
        new CssMinimizerPlugin()
    ]

Like this you don't need to touch the list of minimizers in the optimization entry and you can still have any other plugin in this list.

[alexander-akait]

Yes, we need to improve it, anyway you should put it in minimizer, webpack@5 supports syntax:

optimization: {
    minimize: true,
    minimizer: ['...', new CssMinimizerPlugin()],
  },

[herrvigg]

Interesting! I didn't know this was possible. Yes that looks better. I understand you want to keep the optimization entry for all the other options.

[alexander-akait]

@herrvigg Yes, I think we backport this feature for webpack@4, WIP on this

[herrvigg]

Sounds good! Feel free to close the ticket.

[alexander-akait]

@herrvigg I think we will close it after updating docs

[alexander-akait]

ETA for webpack@5 is 2020-10-10, so we decide do not backport this feature, there are a lot of work for us, sorry 😞

[herrvigg]

No worries, still it would be nice to get in future releases.

[herrvigg]

Also thank you for the information and the good work! Keep it on! :)