https://github.com/atlassian-labs/inline-require-webpack-plugin
Optimise generated bundles by inline requiring ES modules, without CommonJS deoptimisations
https://github.com/atlassian-labs/inline-require-webpack-plugin
webpack webpack-plugin
Last synced: about 1 month ago
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Optimise generated bundles by inline requiring ES modules, without CommonJS deoptimisations
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/atlassian-labs/inline-require-webpack-plugin
- Owner: atlassian-labs
- License: apache-2.0
- Created: 2022-01-19T04:02:30.000Z (over 3 years ago)
- Default Branch: master
- Last Pushed: 2022-06-06T21:25:14.000Z (about 3 years ago)
- Last Synced: 2025-04-24T09:05:22.220Z (about 2 months ago)
- Topics: webpack, webpack-plugin
- Language: TypeScript
- Homepage:
- Size: 607 KB
- Stars: 7
- Watchers: 4
- Forks: 3
- Open Issues: 4
-
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
- Contributing: CONTRIBUTING.md
- License: LICENSE
- Code of conduct: CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
Awesome Lists containing this project
README
inline-require-webpack-plugin
This plugin enables an advanced runtime performance optimisation where evaluation cost of a module dependencies is shifted from the module initialisation phase to where each dependency is consumed.
This technique has been successfully leveraged by other bundlers ([eg FB Metro](https://reactnative.dev/docs/ram-bundles-inline-requires)) and proved to be quite effective on large applications, especially on 2-4 CPUs clients (with TTI improvements up to 400ms on P90).
It is an alternative to feeding Webpack with CommonJS modules and introducing a Babel plugin like `@babel/plugin-transform-modules-commonjs`.
The main advantage is that Webpack is not aware of this optimisation while processing the source code, so all ESM benefits (eg treeshaking) and other plugins optimisations are not affected.
Compatible with Webpack v4.41+ and v5.24+
## Usage
After installing it via
```
npm i -D inline-require-webpack-plugin
```
Import the plugin and add it to Webpack config `plugins` array
```js
const { InlineRequireWebpackPlugin } = require('inline-require-webpack-plugin');
// ...
module.exports = {
// ... webpack config
plugins: [
// ... all other plugins
new InlineRequireWebpackPlugin()
];
}
```
### Support for ConcatenatedModule plugin
If your configuration has `optimization.concatenateModules` enabled (defaults to `true` on prod builds), then you need to use `patch-package` to patch Webpack `ConcatenatedModulePlugin` in order to safely replace variables that map to imported modules.
You can find Webpack patches in `/patches`, grabbing the version relevant to your Webpack version (v4 or v5).
## Documentation
### From ESM top level requires to CommonJS-like inline requires
When Inline Require Plugin gets added to the Webpack config, it transforms such output before it get passed to the minification phase, manipulating it so that such top level requires are moved to their usage location.
As an example, this how Webpack outputs ES modules normally:
```js
var React = __webpack_require__('react')['default'];
var DragDropContext = __webpack_require__('react-beautiful-dnd')['DragDropContext'];
var MyComponent = __webpack_require__('./my-component')['default'];
var useOnDragEnd = __webpack_require__('./my-hooks')['onDragEnd'];
const MyApp = () => {
const onDragEnd = useOnDragEnd();
return React.createElement(DragDropContext, { onDragEnd }, React.createElement(MyComponent));
};
__webpack_exports__['MyApp'] = MyApp;
```
After adding `InlineRequireWebpackPlugin` the output will be:
```js
var React = __webpack_require__('react')['default'];
// import 'react-beautiful-dnd'
// import './my-component'
// import './my-hooks'
const MyApp = () => {
const onDragEnd = __webpack_require__('./my-hooks')['onDragEnd']();
return React.createElement(
__webpack_require__('react-beautiful-dnd')['DragDropContext'],
{ onDragEnd },
React.createElement(__webpack_require__('./my-component')['default'])
);
};
__webpack_exports__['MyApp'] = MyApp;
```
### Quirks of inline requires
Such optimisation is not without risks. Indeed, if applied to everything, it does break ESM side effects. Given the output will evaluate imports only when needed, if some module requires a side effect to be triggered, then it might run too late and cause errors. Because of this risk, the plugin only optimises 3rd party dependencies that have explicit `sideEffect: false` in their `package.json`, but still aggressively applies it for all project files (as leveraging side effects is a bad pattern that should be avoided anyway).
## Development and testing
The test suite is powered by Jest and will run for both Webpack v4 and v5 thanks to npm aliases, and is accessible via
```
npm run test
```
## Contributions
Contributions to inline-require-webpack-plugin are welcome! Please see [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md) for details.
## Thanks
Big shout-out to @shuhei for his [inline-requires-webpack-plugin](https://github.com/shuhei/inline-requires-webpack-plugin), which demonstrated a similar plugin was possible.
## License
Copyright (c) 2022 Atlassian and others.
Apache 2.0 licensed, see [LICENSE](LICENSE) file.
[](https://www.atlassian.com)