FFBT: Fluix Frontend Build Tool 🛠

A tool to build a Typescript based web app without pain.

You don't need to install and configure Webpack with a lot of plugins for Typescript, SASS, etc. Everything is already preconfigured for you

Quick start

npx ffbt-init [PATH_TO_NEW_PROJECT]

What's inside?

• Webpack with configurations for development and production environments
• Dev server with live reload
• Typescript
• CSS and SASS with Autoprefixer
• import-once plugin for SASS (removes duplicated imports across the project during compilation)
• TSlint
• Stylelint
• Tools for analyzing bundle structure

Configuration

Usually you don't need config. If you need to change default behaviour - see the config structure below

Create a file with name ffbt-config.js in the root of your project (near the package.json file)

Config structure:

module.exports = {
    // FFBT is the environment-centric tool, almost all configuration is described in environments
    // You can extend environments from each other
    // All environments extend "default" automatically unless you specify "_extends" property.
    // See the example below
    environments: {
        default: {
            // It contains default values for all flags in the environment.
            // See a list of all flags in the table below.

            // Use it if you want to propagate values to all environments
        },
        development: {
            // Used by default in `ffbt dev` command
        },
        production: {
            // Used by default in `ffbt build` command
        },
        customProduction: {
            // Custom env extended from the production. You can have as many custom envs as you need
            // Usage example: ffbt build --env=customProduction
            // Environment extension is a shallow merge

            // For example, you want to make a bundle for production but without source maps
            _extends: "production",
            sourceMapType: "(none)",
        }
    },
    aliases: {
        // Aliases for the modules
        // See resolve.alias in Webpack docs
    },
    noParse: [
        // Restrict parsing of the specific modules
        // Can help if you want to tune build performance
        // See module.noParse in Webpack docs
    ],
    configureWebpack: (projectConfig) => {
        // Hook for customizing Webpack config
        // You have access to the selected environment and helper for path calculation
        // Just return the part of Webpack config and it will be merged with the main config automatically
    },
};

Environment config flags

Name	Description	Type
browserlist	Currently used only in CSS Aftoprefixer.	string Syntax Docs
outputPath	Destination path, your bundle will be created here	string
sourceMapType	Source map type.	string Docs
staticFilesSizeThresholdKb	All assets with a size lower than the limit will be inlined, otherwise, they will be copied to the destination folder as is	number (Kilobytes)
entrypointName	An entrypoint file name without ts/tsx extension	string
tsconfigPath	Path to tsconfig file	string
devServerConfig	Settings for the WebpackDevServer.	object Docs
buildVersion	A string represents the version of the bundle. Accessible in your code via FFBT_BUILD_VERSION constant	string
showBuildNotifications	Enable/Disable build and type checker system notifications	boolean
enableTypeChecking	Enable/Disable typechecking for Typescript	boolean
cleanDistFolderBeforeBuild	The name speaks for itself	boolean
optimizeBundle	Minify and three-shake the output	boolean
enableCacheBusting	Add hashes to the output file names	boolean
buildStatsStyle	Control what bundle information gets displayed	minimal, normal, verbose
noParse	Webpack's module.noParse (Docs)	[]
aliases	Webpack's resolve.alias (Docs)	{}

Config example

module.exports = {
    environments: {
        default: {
            browserlist: "last 2 versions",
            outputPath: "dist",
            staticFilesSizeThresholdKb: 10,
            showBuildNotifications: true,
            enableTypeChecking: true,
            cleanDistFolderBeforeBuild: false,
            devServerConfig: {
                port: 9393,
            },
        },
        development: {
            sourceMapType: "eval",
            entrypointName: "index"
        },
        production: {
            sourceMapType: "nosources-source-map",
            optimizeBundle: true,
            showBuildNotifications: false,
            enableTypeChecking: false,
            cleanDistFolderBeforeBuild: true,
            entrypointName: "index.prod"
        },
    },
    configureWebpack: () => {
        return {
            plugins: [
                new OfflinePlugin(),
            ]
        }
    }
};

Bundle analysis

To analyze bundle just run ffbt dev|build --analyze We use the following webpack plugins for analyzing:

• bundle-stats-webpack-plugin
• webpack-bundle-analyzer

Once you run the analyze command the generated report from webpack-bundle-analyzer will be opened. You can find the report from bundle-stats-webpack-plugin inside the bundle-report folder inside your project.

Compare bundles

You can compare bundles

# use the current bundle as a base for comparison
BUNDLE_STATS_BASELINE=true ffbt build --analyze
# do some operations with bundle (add/remove libraries, etc.)
# run analyze again
ffbt build --analyze
# open bundle-report/bundle-stats.html and see the comparison