yarn_install task is not installing devDependencies

[nikolalsvk]

Due to the recent changes that have been made, webpacker:yarn_install task is not installing devDependencies. This is breaking my CI builds, since I relied on webpacker to do the install of packages for my test environment on the CI server.

Change that brought this in the webpacker gem d5fe0fe#diff-5a0f30530a2f1282593526bb85d65029
Change that brought this in the Rails gem
rails/rails@2118c98#diff-dcd44149ba1cd25c12956a3ebecc32a3

I'm just wondering if we could introduce an optional --production=true|false flag in the rake task that does yarn install?

Or create a NODE_ENV dependant flag for the rake task?

[gauravtiwari]

@nikolalsvk Perhaps you can use yarn directly instead of relying on rake task?

[nikolalsvk]

@gauravtiwari yes, I'm doing yarn install after assets precompilation, but that is just one extra yarn install to do.

I'm just wondering could there be a different yarn_install task for testing environment for example?

[gauravtiwari]

@nikolalsvk I guess what you could do is disable webpacker rake task and create a new one as before:

# lib/tasks/yarn_install.rake
Rake::Task['yarn_install'].clear

task 'yarn_install' do
    # old task here
end

Would this work?

[nikolalsvk]

@gauravtiwari guess it would work, thanks.

I'm just curious why not leave the choice whether to install or not to install devDependencies?

[cipater]

I'm having issues with this change as well. In particular, yarn install --production seems to be removing the babel-plugin-relay, but it's required as part of the asset precompilation... which is now failing due to being unable to find the plugin.

[arthow4n]

IMHO lots of people install webpack-* and babel-* in devDependencies since they are for building instead of serving things. yarn install --production can cause devDependencies being used to build removed. I always perform yarn before doing assets:precompile but now I get my webpack-chunk-hash in devDependencies missing after webpacker:yarn_install after upgrading webpacker. I don't think it is a good idea forcing yarn install --production in webpacker rake task.

[catskull]

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but this change broke my production deploys. I too had all my compilation related packages in devDependencies, so the production server couldn't build the assets correctly.

[odlp]

Cross-linking to #1330, where the task ends up removing dev dependencies which have already been installed.

[luccasmaso]

Any solutions? As in rails 5.2 the --production is harcoded, should I migrate all devDependencies to dependencies? What would be the least worst patch to it?

[groksrc]

I am also having issues with --production being hardcoded. I have a lot of things in devDependencies that don't belong in production and I am more likely to remove webpacker than I am to change this. I also have more than just production and development environments and would like more flexibility in passing options to NODE_ENV. It's fine if webpacker makes certain assumptions for me but it shouldn't force me to do things a certain way.

[leikind]

I have a Rails 5.1.6 app with webpacker successfully deployed on Heroku app with 2 buildpacks:
(1)nodejs and (2) ruby.

Upgrading to 5.2.0 breaks the Heroku build for the reasons @nikolalsvk listed above. The build fails because there is a number of devDependencies not installed after rake yarn:install.

Moving devDependencies to dependencies feels very very wrong.

What is interesting is Heroku's approach to handling devDependencies and dependencies in their nodejs buildpack:

By default, Heroku will install all dependencies listed in package.json under dependencies and devDependencies.

After running the installation and build steps Heroku will strip out the packages declared under devDependencies before deploying the application.

( https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/nodejs-support#package-installation )

It seems like a more reasonable approach than just excluding all devDependencies.

Unfortunately, the rails buildpack is executed after the nodejs buildpack, and webpacker:yarn_install makes sure none of my devDependencies are present.

I am wondering what the correct solution should be.

[gauravtiwari]

@leikind They are not devDependencies really because you are using them on Heroku as well, which is a production environment. If however, you compile your assets locally and then push them to Heroku then they can safely live under dev dependencies, considering assets:precompile is never run on Heroku.

With webpacker, we recommend putting all build and app related dependencies under dependencies section in package.json (except test deps). I understand the confusion but you see they are not app dependencies i.e. it won't be included in your pack but they are needed to produce a pack or build - either on Heroku or on your local machine. Does this make sense?

[leikind]

The app is indeed built on Heroku, assets:precompile is executed.

You see, if my app were a Node.js app using only the node buildpack, I'd have no issues building my app on Heroku, as the node buildpack would install all packages first, run build scripts (webpack for instance), and then strip devDependencies. So, the node team in Heroku does invite its customers to build their node apps on Heroku.

I see no argument against building my app on Heroku except for the webpacker team making it harder.

Here's my current hack to solve my problem:

namespace :yarn do
  desc 'Install all JavaScript dependencies as specified via Yarn'
  task :install do
    system('./bin/yarn install --no-progress')
    Rake::Task['yarn:install'].clear
  end
end

[mhfen]

@leikind They are not devDependencies really because you are using them on Heroku as well, which is a production environment. If however, you compile your assets locally and then push them to Heroku then they can safely live under dev dependencies, considering assets:precompile is never run on Heroku.

Many teams run assets:precompile on heroku. In fact, it is a standard part of the rails build pack...

With webpacker, we recommend putting all build and app related dependencies under dependencies section in package.json (except test deps). I understand the confusion but you see they are not app dependencies i.e. it won't be included in your pack but they are needed to produce a pack or build - either on Heroku or on your local machine. Does this make sense?

It does not. Webpack, babel, etc are dev ops tools. They are not application code. Heroku installs devDeps, so why force everyone to make a bad organization decision and move those to deps?

This should be addressed by the Webpacker team...