Version 4.x no longer compiling to es5

[walkjivefly]

Expected behaviour: not a blank window. I don't know what it should look like, never used it before.
Actual behaviour: blank window.

Metamask version: 4.2.0
Browser: Chrome Version 46.0.2490.71 (yes, very old, but it's the latest version I can run on this particular machine).
OS: Linux SolydK 201412 (bastardised Debian Wheezy/Jessie hybrid)

Popup log says:

And background log says:

These logs don't match any of the other "blank window" reports.

[walkjivefly]

Chrome web store says it's compatible.

[kumavis]

@walkjivefly as @lazaridiscom said your browser is too old. At 2.5 years, its not just a matter of not having the latest features, I'm not confident that your browser is safe to use. If a critical vulnerability is known that affects your browser version, websites might be able to steal your private keys from MetaMask.

That said, you mentioned it used to work. Its likely that with version 4.x we changed our build process and are no longer compiling es7 to es5.

[kumavis]

For now, you can manually install an older version.

• Be aware it will not auto update.
• Be sure you have your seed phrase written down on paper before starting this process.
• Download a version from before 4.x (https://github.com/MetaMask/metamask-extension/releases?after=v4.1.0)
• You can drag and drop the downloaded version in the extensions page of chrome.
• Be sure to disable the old version of metamask, as things break if two are open at once.

[walkjivefly]

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried 3.14.1 and all 3.x.0 back to 3.4.0; none of them worked. I've never used Metamask before; I think someone else reported they had in some other issue with similar symptoms. I only wanted to install it to have a look at the Origin Protocol demo dApp. Guess I won't be bothering for the time being.

Changing the title won't help other people in the same situation as me find the report and see the suggested workaround. Which is a shame since it might work for them.

If I ever get my machine upgraded I'll have another go. Cheers!

[danfinlay]

Changing the title won't help other people in the same situation as me find the report and see the suggested workaround.

But it will help us fix the issue sooner. Sorry for the hassle, have a good one!

[ryan-rowland]

Looks like this was introduced here https://github.com/MetaMask/metamask-extension/pull/2975/files#diff-b9e12334e9eafd8341a6107dd98510c9L381

[kumavis]

The "fix" was reverted because it broke the build process

[ryan-rowland]

🤦‍♂️ Sorry I broke your build.

Been looking at this for way too long now. Things I found:

1. The "memory leak" removing the babel step was just a memory overflow because uglify was trying to package your whole library at once because it was all in the same file. Running node with node --max_old_space_size=4096 fixed this.
2. The "memory leak" was also covering up another issue: running babel wraps the code in a require block, which also breaks everything once loaded into the browser (same breaking behavior my commit caused)
3. Babel-runtime is huge and almost doubling the size of some minified files
4. Trying to configure babel to remove const declarations makes me want to pull my hair out.

Tapping out. 🤷‍♂️

[ryan-rowland]

Also: CircleCI approved my PR despite it breaking the build, we might want to update the CI to cover this step of the build process.

[danfinlay]

Captured in #3699.

[Epelzhenya]

Can anybody tell me with simple language what to do whith this problem? English is not my native language.

[Epelzhenya]

@lazaridiscom thank you wery much)

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[JonnyBurger]

Hi there,

sorry I have to give up this as well.
I figured out the memory issue at least.

The build step was bundle -> minify -> transpile, which gave one big file to Babel and that is why the memory issue occured.
Changing it to transpiling -> bundling -> minifying solved this issue.

However, it's true that is seems very hard to configure Babel to remove all const. Alternatively, I was also not able to set "strict mode" in Babel. Weird because it should work.

So sorry for not being able to deliver.

[vs77bb]

Thanks for the honest update @JonnyBurger and appreciate you taking a look! Have a great weekend.

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[erchaves]

I'm not 100% sure, but at a glance, I think Babel is not setup to transpile const and let, but traceur could do this for you. It doesn't seem like it would make sense to introduce that into the actual codebase to solve this problem just for really old legacy browsers. But if some folks really needed to find a work around, I suppose they could filter the js through traceur and shim it back in, maybe through a fork of the project or something..

edit: It looks like this might work in theory babel plugin transform-es2015-block-scoping.

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[WillBeebe]

Babel can transpile const and let for sure, you just need to set the right target. It will even add "use strict" to the top of the file.

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Issue Status: 1. Open 2. Started 3. Submitted 4. Done

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These users each claimed they can complete the work by 8 months, 1 week ago.
Please review their action plans below:

1) ajnauleau has started work.

Utilize Babel for JavaScript compatibility and transpilation

• JavaScript package that transpiles JavaScript ES6+ code to ES5

Install babel dependencies by running

npm install babel-cli -D
npm install babel-preset-env -D

Create a .babelrc file inside your project and add the following code inside it:

{
"presets": ["env"]
}

Add the following script to your scripts object in package.json:

"build": "babel src -d lib"

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[ajnauleau]

Looking to be a bit more difficult than I expected, getting errors building gulp at mascara with babel "env"-- will keep posted.

[ajnauleau]

*Fixed, updated to babel-preset-env, just had to change the order of presets to "env", "react", "stage-0"-- now builds.

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• PR by @ajnauleau

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[ghost]

@bdresser , it looks like this one can be closed.