Angular-cli@webpack is awesome

With webpack on board, angular-cli is looking like a seriously viable toolset for developing and building production ready applications.

And a default webpack config is a life-saver

Webpack's not exactly a breeze. Having default webpack configs ready to go the second a developer creates a project saves them a lot of time and energy.

But webpack needs to be configurable

Once that project's spun up and begins to take form, that developer may want to tweak the webpack config. They may want to add this loader, and that loader, and they may have opinions about how it should be bundled for production.

You can't please everybody

To bloat the base webpack configs, one PR after another, with each individual's particular project need is unsustainable.

What then?

When a developer needs something that the default won't be able to provide, they might be inclined to break off on their own, leaving the benefits of angular-cli aside.

Why not allow the ease of angular-cli to coexist with the configurability of webpack?

One possible solution

webpack-config.js

webpack-config.js looks for the following config files, based on the current environment.

• weback-build-common.ts
• webpack-build-development.ts
• webpack-build-production.ts
• webpack-build-mobile.ts

Using angular-cli.json, the developer could point to environment-specific webpack configuration overrides.

angular-cli.json

angular-cli.json is already storing paths for karma configs, protractor configs, and tsconfig, why not let it also store webpack configs?

{
  ...,
  "e2e": {
    "protractor": {
      "config": "config/protractor.conf.js"
    }
  },
  "test": {
    "karma": {
      "config": "config/karma.conf.js"
    }
  },
  "webpack": {
    "development": {
      "config": "config/webpack.dev.conf.js"
    },
    ...
}  

If webpack-config.js then checked angular-cli.json to see:

• if an override path has been provided, and
• if a file exists at that path

...it could load the override config instead of the default config.

Summary

This solution offers the developer the option of using default webpack configs to get rolling, as well as the ability to override those defaults once their project begins to show unique requirements, with the smallest possible footprint on the base library.

It also allows the developer to stay in sync with the angular-cli library without having to eject from it, and allows the default configs to continue to stay relevant.