meel-hd
commented
1 month ago @nijel This will be a big improvement.
To sum up, currently used 3d party code is included in the app by weblate/templates/base.html by more than a dozen script tags. linking to large 3rd party library files. Which are installed by yarn and copied using custom tooling into static/vendor.
So given the desired results here it is what we will have:
- Ease of install and update (one command
yarn install library). - Familiar to new contributors (The same usual workflow used by the web dev community using npm/yarn, with no need for custom tooling.)
- Installs will be stored in the gitignored folder
node_modules. - The use of the 3rd party code in
static/vendorwill be unnecessary and can be removed. - There will be one source of truth for declaring the use of third party code.
How:
1- We will introduce a new directory vendor/ for managing frontend 3rd party code.
2- It will contain the index.js, package.json, yarn.lock, webpack.config.js and the gitignored node_modules/.
3- index.js Will be used to import the libraries necessary for the frontend. And remove them if needed too.
4- Webpack will be used to build and bundle the libraries used and declared in index.js into a minified file.
5- The resulted .js file will be included into the base.html template. To make it available for the parts that needs it.
Visual Representation:
Some questions:
- What bundler we should use (the most well known ones are webpack, vite, parcel, and rollup).
- I am not sure if we should git track the output
.min.jsfile. - How to integrate this in the Docker workflow.
- Adaption of this will be on one time or gradual.
- And at last. did I miss something or there is some possible better solutions?
nijel
github-actions[bot]
Describe the problem
Right now, Weblate uses custom tooling to include vendored libraries (see https://docs.weblate.org/en/latest/contributing/frontend.html#dependency-management). This is tricky to deal with for new contributors and brings issues when updating some libraries (see for example https://github.com/WeblateOrg/weblate/actions/runs/10178733602/job/28152952153?pr=11956 in https://github.com/WeblateOrg/weblate/pull/11956).
Describe the solution you would like
There should be some standard solution that works for us. Requirements (those can be discussed, though):
Describe alternatives you have considered
Things like webpack could be a solution. It might also replace the currently used django-compressor.
Screenshots
No response
Additional context
No response