Funding Open Source: How Webpack Reached $400k+/year

Re:Funding Open Source: How Webpack Reached $400k+/year by gortok on Sunday November 05, 2017 @07:29AM (#15629117)

I had a similar issue very recently with webpack.

I was attempting to use its bundling capabilities to bundle css and js files for a web application. Believe it or not, the very simple end-user use case of bundling css is not a part of the core library, nor is it well demonstrated or explained in the docs. After a few hours, I simply gave up and continued to use gulp.

We don’t treat user time as precious because our audience is developers; yet startup developers are the people who can ill-afford to lose an afternoon to try to figure out something as demonstrably simple as bundling CSS.

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Re:Funding Open Source: How Webpack Reached $400k+/year by aaron-lebo on Sunday November 05, 2017 @07:31AM (#15629120)

Does this not work?

https://github.com/webpack/webpack/blob/master/examples/css-...

https://webpack.js.org/loaders/css-loader/#src/components/Si...

Note: examples at bottom of second link, found it by searching "css" in the doc site

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Re:Funding Open Source: How Webpack Reached $400k+/year by untog on Sunday November 05, 2017 @09:51AM (#15629637)

Having to use two loaders (one being loaded by totally non-standard syntax inside the other loader), a plugin (that specifies the output filename nowhere near where the others are specified) and then using a JavaScript require() function to include a CSS file is utterly demented.

I get that's how Webpack users are used to doing it, but when you're new to it (or just coming back to it from a different build system) it's the very definition of insanity.

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Re:Funding Open Source: How Webpack Reached $400k+/year by aaron-lebo on Sunday November 05, 2017 @09:59AM (#15629679)

Maybe, but it's understandable after five minutes and you literally have code you can copy and paste. I've seen much worse in basically every other language. We had a 5k line project, after the first day of setup, we've had to touch the webpack config once or twice.

Also, feel free to disagree about the CSS, I think it's a very intuitive way of including assets.

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Re:Funding Open Source: How Webpack Reached $400k+/year by untog on Sunday November 05, 2017 @01:25PM (#15630761)

You can copy and paste Webpack config to your heart's content, but actually understanding them is something else.

I thought the breaking API changes with 2.0 would at least accommodate this incredibly common use of a bundler, but no.

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Re:Funding Open Source: How Webpack Reached $400k+/year by gortok on Monday November 06, 2017 @12:43PM (#15637142)

I've seen those docs. I tried implementing webpack to replace our gulp bundler (which was initially an ASP.NET Core Bundler) for an ASP.NET Core project.

Unanswered questions that I left the project with (I time-boxed myself to 4 hours; as that was the initial length of time it took me to get gulp up and running in totality):

- Why do I need a require for my CSS? I literally want to replace the css with its minified form. Maybe even bundle it together (I'd settle for the former).

- How the heck is web-pack doing all this; and why is the package called 'extract-css-loader'? I don't want to extract CSS; I want to minify it.

- If I want a source folder and a dist/ folder for my CSS; how would I get Webpack to update the URLs in the .html files?

- Am I crazy for still doing this through HTML? Is there a 'better way' ?

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