Neutrino controls our frontend linting, transpilation, source-maps,
testing, dev-server and optimisation of production builds.
Highlights of the upgrade are:
* Major version updates to the individual tools within (such as webpack,
Babel and ESLint), significantly improving performance, fixing
transpilation/minification correctness bugs, adding support for newer
ECMAScript features, and increasing linter coverage.
* Hot reloading in the dev server now works for all entry-points and not
just the jobs view, shortening the feedback cycle.
* Reduced bundle size due to webpack 4's tree shaking, scope hoisting,
automatic shared/vendor code chunk splitting (no need for the manually
maintained 'vendor' list).
* CSS is now extracted out of JS, which improves performance, reduces
bundle size and prevents the initial white flash of un-styled content.
* Support for dynamic imports/code splitting (needed for bug 1502192).
* Support for Jest via a new Jest preset (unblocks bug 1364045).
* Support for public class field declarations (unblocks bug 1480166).
* Improved source-maps (increases the quality of production exception
trace-backs and fixes several debugger breakpoint bugs).
* Reduced amount of custom configuration required for our fairly complex
frontend needs, reducing maintenance burden and allowing for easier
future Neutrino upgrades.
In addition this PR:
* Fixes the WhiteNoise `immutable_file_test()` regex, so that it now
correctly enables browser caching of images, fonts and source maps.
* Enables webpack-dev-server's overlay feature, which displays any
compilation errors in the browser, saving having to switch back
to the console (this can be enabled for warnings too if desired).
* Enables webpack-dev-server's automatic browser-opening feature,
which saves having to manually navigate to `localhost:5000` after
running `yarn start`.
* Switches Karma tests to run Firefox in headless mode, reducing the
workflow disruption when running `yarn test`.
* Uses the new webpack `performance` option to enable maximum asset
file size thresholds, to help prevent bundle-size regressions.
* Rewrites the `package.json` script commands so that they now work
correctly on Windows, even when setting environment variables.
Performance comparison:
* Local `yarn build`:
- Cached: 2m34s -> 23s
- Uncached: 2m34s -> 58s
* Local `yarn start`:
- Cached: 34.5s -> 13.6s
- Uncached: 34.5s -> 31.3s
* Local `yarn test`
- Cached: 61.5s -> 19.8s
- Uncached: 61.5s -> 22.0s
* Local `yarn lint`
- Cached: 3.8s -> 1.8s
- Uncached: 13.7s -> 13.4s
* Travis end-to-end time:
9 minutes -> 6 minutes
* Heroku deploy end-to-end time:
14 minutes -> 9 minutes