Shipping Webpacker v6 -- Status

rubyonrails-core
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Update on rails/webpacker v6

I am working with @guillaumebriday and @dhh on a v6 release of rails/webpacker. I’m hopeful that we can ship a v6 soon! v6 features integration with webpack v5 and more.

I’ve been working on Rails and Webpack integration since my 2014 writeup Fast Rich Client Rails Development With Webpack and the ES6 Transpiler. After that, I developed the gem React on Rails which is still under very active development.

Many Rails projects using my gem React on Rails depend on rails/webpacker.

So far, I’ve done the following:

  1. Triaged all issues and PRs.
  2. Labelled all issues and PRs, so it’s easy to see any issues or PRs requiring review.
  3. Marked issues and PRs for the v6 release.
  4. Proactively closed issues that were not bugs or improvements, inviting submitters to argue for reopening.

Regarding the long-term future of rails/webpacker, here’s a good discussion.

To quote @DHH:

Webpacker v6 is a great option for those who want to continue on that track. But it will no longer be bundled with Rails 7. The path we’re going with by default going forward is import maps (no Node required at all) and then jsbundling-rails as the step from there. But you don’t need anyone’s permission to continue to use Webpacker if you fancy. The gem will still be there, and v6 is a much slimmer fit than v5 was.

I’m super excited to ship v6!

Questions for the Community:

  1. What can I do better as a moderator on rails/webpacker? Do we have guidelines for moderators of rails projects?

  2. Who cares about the next version of rails/webpacker, and what else would you like to see?

  3. What can I do to accelerate the release process? The uncertainty of the final details of rails/webpacker affects many projects.

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I am most excited about the fact that webpacker v6 is much slimmer. To be fair, that is really the only major change I am familiar with, but it is one worth getting excited about!

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Webpacker 6 has gone through 6 very long RC releases not including the mess that was the beta/pre releases. The bandaid really needs to be ripped off at some point.

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I’ve evaluated all the current methods to bundle JS and for some projects webpacker will still be my gem of choice moving forward. Looking forward to v6. Thanks.

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There will likely never be any official “rails” release of v6.

I have created a fork and pushed up a new release:

However, I might quickly change the name based on community feedback.

We also have a discussion going on here:

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Credit goes to @DHH for the fork name:

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There will likely never be any official “rails” release of v6.

But there is already a rails/webpacker repo that “hosts the code for v6.x.x.”, and now there is a shakapacker fork which also claims to be the same thing?

Maybe it would be less confusing if the rails/webpacker didn’t mention any attempt to be v6?

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Furthermore, just because webpacker won’t be bundled with Rails 7+, is that the same as saying there will never be an official Rails release of webpacker 6?

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The rails core team is not using webpack. Thus, they don’t have the bandwidth to maintain this.

Maybe @dhh or @rafaelfranca can comment here?

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As Justin mentioned, there’s no bandwidth in the Rails core group to continue to evolve Webpacker. All our energy is going into the two new defaults: jsbundling-rails and import maps. We will continue to support Webpacker v5 on the Ruby side according to the normal maintenance schedule.

A public announcement has been posted here: GitHub - rails/webpacker: Use Webpack to manage app-like JavaScript modules in Rails

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Discussion can followup here: