MSBuild and Webpack

Question

I am developing an Angular2 application in VS2015 and have a webpack bundling and minification environment set up for the same.

This is my webpack.conf.js

switch (process.env.NODE_ENV) {
    case 'prod':
    case 'production':
        module.exports = require('./config/webpack.prod');
        break;
    case 'test':
    case 'testing':
        //module.exports = require('./config/webpack.test');
        break;
    case 'dev':
    case 'development':
    default:
        module.exports = require('./config/webpack.dev');
}

I have also installed a webpack task runner which invokes this with the following commands

cmd /c SET NODE_ENV=development&& webpack -d --color

and

cmd /c SET NODE_ENV=production&& webpack -p --color

The setup seems to work fine. However, I want to integrate this with my TFS builds CI. The webpack command should fire after the project is built and report a build failure incase the webpack build fails. I have tried to incorporate the following code in my .csproj file

<Target Name="AfterBuild">
<Exec Condition="$(Configuration) == 'Debug'" Command="cmd /c SET NODE_ENV=production&& webpack -p --color">
</Exec>
</Target>

It failed with an error 9009

After that I tried, starting the command up from the node_modules folder where webpack was installed

<Target Name="AfterBuild">
<Exec Condition="$(Configuration) == 'Debug'" Command="./node_modules/.bin cmd /c SET NODE_ENV=production&& webpack -p --color">
</Exec>
</Target>

still in vain. Even if I get this to work, I am not sure if it would cause the VS build to fail if it encounters an error in webpack.

How do I go ahead with this?

Solution 1

Put different scripts in package.json for development and production mode. Then on 'AfterBuild' event of visual studio, call those scripts on different configurations.

Add following two scripts, 'buildDev' and 'buildProd' in package.json:

"scripts": {
    "buildDev": "SET NODE_ENV=development && webpack -d --color",
    "buildProd": "SET NODE_ENV=production && webpack -p --color",
  }

In AfterBuild events of visual studio add these two conditional commands:

<Target Name="AfterBuild">
    <Exec Condition="$(Configuration) == 'Debug'" Command="npm run buildDev" />
    <Exec Condition="$(Configuration) == 'Release'" Command="npm run buildProd" />
  </Target>

And finally webpack.conf.js like this:

switch (process.env.NODE_ENV.trim()) {
    case 'prod':
    case 'production':
        module.exports = require('./config/webpack.prod');
        break;
    case 'dev':
    case 'development':
    default:
        module.exports = require('./config/webpack.dev');
        break;
}

Important Note: Make sure to use trim() function with process.env.NODE_ENV as cmd will treat the blank space in the command "SET NODE_ENV=development && webpack -d --color as character and append it in NODE_ENV variable. So when we are setting it as 'development', it actually gets set as (development + whitespace).

Solution 2

For TFS CI build, you can refer to these steps to achieve your requirement.

1. Add npm step
2. Add Command Line step

Note: There is –bail argument, which is required otherwise the step/task will be succeed even though webpack command throws exception.

Also, you can add variable in build definition (variable tab)

Comments

[Eamon Nerbonne]

Isn't this going to be really slow? This implies you're running wepack on every C# build, and that might easily add 20s to your otherwise 1s build times.

[Hemendra]

@EamonNerbonne I agree, this will increase build time. Depending upon the situation one can have different combination of running webpack commands. For e.g. I make use of webpack --watch command while in debug mode and make use of above mentioned solution only in release mode i.e. Nightly builds. If you can think of any better solution please suggest :)

[Eamon Nerbonne]

Thanks for the fast reply - I'll give it a shot, but I guess my chances aren't great...

[Wollan]

Fyi: If anyone is getting 3x size of their bundle .js file then know it's the -d parameter causing this with Webpack 2 (it's causing source map files to be baked into it). github.com/webpack/webpack/issues/2445

[Manfred]

In Visual Studio 2019 the following may work <Target Name="PostBuild" AfterTargets="PostBuildEvent"> <Exec Condition="$(Configuration) == 'Debug'" Command="npm run buildDev" /> <Exec Condition="$(Configuration) == 'Release'" Command="npm run buildProd" /> </Target>