Please upgrade @expo/webpack-config's webpack dependency to 5.x

[andymatuschak]

Description

@expo/webpack-config's webpack dependency is currently 4.43.0, the last major version. The current major version is 5.x, and it'd be great to support that: I'd like to be able to take advantage of some of the changes in recent releases.

Expected Behavior

@expo/webpack-config should depend on webpack@5

Observed Behavior

@expo/webpack-config depends on [email protected]

Environment

I don't think this is relevant, but here you are!

Expo CLI 3.28.5 environment info:
    System:
      OS: macOS 10.15.7
      Shell: 5.7.1 - /bin/zsh
    Binaries:
      Node: 12.18.4 - ~/.nvm/versions/node/v12.18.4/bin/node
      Yarn: 1.22.5 - /usr/local/bin/yarn
      npm: 6.14.6 - ~/.nvm/versions/node/v12.18.4/bin/npm
      Watchman: 4.9.0 - /usr/local/bin/watchman
    Managers:
      CocoaPods: 1.9.3 - /usr/local/bin/pod
    SDKs:
      iOS SDK:
        Platforms: iOS 14.1, DriverKit 19.0, macOS 10.15, tvOS 14.0, watchOS 7.0
    IDEs:
      Android Studio: 4.0 AI-193.6911.18.40.6626763
      Xcode: 12.1/12A7403 - /usr/bin/xcodebuild
    npmPackages:
      react: ~17.0.1 => 17.0.1 
    Expo Workflow: managed

[EvanBacon]

Looks like it's not ready yet, there's a lot of overlap between CRA and expo/webpack-config, a couple of the plugins don't appear to support Webpack 5 properly yet facebook/create-react-app#7929

[nandorojo]

Webpack 5 doesn't seem fully there yet, but Next.js has experimental support for it: https://nextjs.org/docs/messages/webpack5

[nandorojo]

I'd like to bring this issue back up. Vercel is putting real resources behind Webpack 5, and Next is releasing many advances for it. It has many performance improvements that would be nice to take advantage of for build time. Maybe it could be published behind a next tag?

[nandorojo]

Possibly related: #3226

[nandorojo]

Next.js now uses webpack 5 by default. https://nextjs.org/blog/next-10-2#webpack-5

This has big DX improvements for web.

Does anyone know how to make Expo's webpack config do the same? I'm open to helping, but I'm not really familiar with Webpack.

[nandorojo]

I believe I figured this out. I'll submit a PR once I stress test it more.

As it stands, my solution is to disable Expo's transpiling of modules when webpack5: true. In those cases, you'd need to use next-transpile-modules. For instance, you'd add react-native-web to your next-transpile-modules array, along with other expo-* packages.

[marklawlor]

Building upon @nandorojo's work, I have an experimental version of @expo/next-adapter which includes a couple of patches to @expo/webpack-config to allow for webpack 5 support

This won't work for the pure Expo web applications, but if your using NextJS it should allow you to update to NextJS 10.2 and use Webpack5.

https://github.com/marklawlor/expo-nextjs-webpack-5

[csvan]

This has severe implications for users of Node 17 and later, see webpack/webpack#14532