Proposal: Make Webpack the default CLI bundler option

[Vheissu]

I'm submitting a feature request

Current behavior:
The Aurelia CLI recommends RequireJS as the default bundling option of choice. Although RequireJS is battle-tested and works, it requires a little more work to add in dependencies (namely inside of your aurelia.json file).

After reading this article the author runs into a few issues with adding in third-party libraries due to the required step of needing to add things into the bundles' section and when dealing with fonts in Font Awesome, needing to create a gulp task.

I understand that the CLI added in the add and import commands for automating the process of installing and adding dependencies into the aurelia.json bundles section, but many do not know about this and they don't always work for every package (particular packages exporting both Javascript and CSS).

I agree that this kind of workflow in 2018 when Webpack has all but become the golden standard for bundling, is painful. And I believe that this might be tripping up less experience and experienced developers alike.

• What is the expected behavior?
  I propose that Webpack becomes the default bundler choice.

• What is the motivation / use case for changing the behavior?
  Developer experience is negatively impacted as a result of having a bundles section in aurelia.json and packages with CSS, Fonts and Javascript make it even more complex (especially when au add and au import fail to add the dependencies properly).

[AshleyGrant]

I, for one, welcome our webpack overlords.

Also, I'm in favor of this proposal.

[Alexander-Taran]

Pleae consider also —i-know-what-im-doing flag
And dont allow for any options unless provided

[zewa666]

Meh, not really a fan of Webpack ... what a surprise :), but I see the case and especially that first steps become much less troublesome, although you sacrifice flexibility and the features of a real loader for extended use cases.
Ones PLATFORM.moduleName gets dropped this should be a pretty easy for newcomers to start with.

[Alexander-Taran]

@zewa666 choice is good when you know how to choose. It is good to inform about different options after newcomers get a taste of goodness. And face real difficulties.

[3cp]

Ones PLATFORM.moduleName gets dropped

@zewa666 do you mean there is on-going effect to remove the api? can you share a link?

[zewa666]

There is an active PR but for the sake of it i cant remember where i've seen it. @bigopon was working on it

[bigopon]

The PR is here aurelia/framework#858

It is useful for plugins distribution, as it helps distributing whole plugin as 1 file easily, but not so much with application development as messing with Origin / file path is quite annoying for requiring sub modules inside view templates. Could help with scenarios where multiple teams are working on same project, each team could distribute their features as a single bundle though

[3cp]

I ask this because I have bit interest to add support of PLATFORM.moduleName in cli AMD tracing.

There is a chance to drop "dependencies" section all together by finding missing dependency automatically in node_modules. importer/strategies/amodro also needs to be improved to handle all commonjs cases.

I want to live without knowing webpack. @bigopon your PR means I don't have to touch (or say less demanded) tracing code, cannot wait for it to be merged. But anyway, I have no commitment (spare time) to implement my idea in near future.

[ghiscoding]

I think @JeroenVinke already did the switch for WebPack being default in this commit and new version 0.33.0 seems to have it merged as well.

[JeroenVinke]

Correct :)

[3cp]

Hi guys, I wrote some code to backup my mouth. #862.
Appreciate if you wanna help testing it.