Modern Front-End Development for Rails: Can't get past the entire first chapter

Community PragProg Customers
,
1

Trying to build an app from scratch based off of the first chapter is extremely frustrating when trying to use the later/latest versions of related libraries.

I’m using Rails 6.1.4.1 and Webpacker v6.0.0.rc.5:

rails new side_project -d postgresql

gem 'webpacker', github: 'rails/webpacker' (6.0.0.rc.5 at time of installation)

After running rails webpack:install, by default the rails app uses app/javascript/packs instead of app/packs/entrypoints. I renamed the folders to follow the same pattern as in the book.

Second, application.scss does not exist, only application.css in app/assets/stylesheets/application.css, so if we need to rename and copy it over to packs/entrypoints/ it’s unclear.

fork-ts-checker-webpack-plugin is required in the config mentioned on p 57 but it’s not mentioned anywhere that this has to be added with yarn first. yarn add fork-ts-checker-webpack-plugin.

Last, I had to update webpacker.yml to update the source_path and source_entry_path to match the new folder structure:

default: &default
  source_path: app/packs
  source_entry_path: entrypoints
  public_root_path: public
  public_output_path: packs
  cache_path: tmp/webpacker
  webpack_compile_output: true

Even after all this config change, I cannot get the app to compile:
Webpacker can't find application.js

Here is a sample repo where I’ve tried to get this to work, any help would be much appreciated.

EDIT:

Was finally able to get my app to run. It required doing a few different things, some from the webpacker 6 upgrade guide: webpacker/v6_upgrade.md at master · rails/webpacker · GitHub

  1. delete .browserlistrc
  2. delete babel.config.js
  3. yarn add postcss-flexbugs-fixes postcss-import postcss-preset-env (this is especially annoying because they are required inside postcss.config.js by default)
  4. Add a dummy TS file to entrypoints/ or tsconfig.json will complain. I added a empty dummy.ts file.

The lack of documentation for all the config that is required with rails new along with a fresh install of webpacker 6 is unfortunate, hopefully things can be updated soon.

2

Yes, it’s extremely frustrating that Webpacker and Rails never quite agreed on file structure, and that Webpacker is continuing to make changes after the book came out.

Webpacker still hasn’t released an official 6.0 version, and Rails 7.0 changes everything all over again.

I’m not quite sure what the most useful thing to do about this, but creating a good place to go for current instructions on setting up the app is probably useful. I’m not sure whether it’s worth doing a Rails 6 one, or doing a Rails 7 one, or both.

3

I think it would be super useful to have a place to go to for up-to-date setup instructions. I edited my post and tried adding all the steps involved but it could be more thorough.