Plugin modules

[insin]

Plugin modules would be one way to allow people to tweak for their preferred workflow (having just read the Sass issue #78) while keeping config out of the user's hands. This would also make it easier to port to something else if you ever move away from Webpack.

e.g. here's the complete Sass plugin for nwb - all it does is provide the config and dependencies required to add a new Webpack loader, with a package.json scan for nwb-* modules in nwb itself.

Is there a particular way of implementing plugins which could be supported in create-react-app?

[gaearon]

Not currently. Please see #99 (comment).
We don’t want people to think in terms of “loaders” and “plugins”. This is not a nice interface to Webpack—it’s a nice way to create React apps. We might switch away from webpack later.

[insin]

We might switch away from webpack later.

That would be the beauty of using a plugin module (not a Webpack plugin). Usage would be:

Hey, want to use Sass? npm install react-scripts-sass (which has a peerDependency on react-scripts@1, and is automatically detected and used by react-scripts when available) and it will just work.

If a better build tool emerges, release a new major version of everything and the user is none-the-wiser to what's happening behind the scenes.

[gaearon]

release a new major version of everything

We don’t want to get into a situation where people created 100 addons for create-react-app using webpack, we switch away from webpack, and 100 addons need to be rewritten.

[gaearon]

Another problem with this is that people will want to install 10 different plugins, and package.json will be just as hard to maintain as it is with vanilla dependencies today.

Also, how would eject work? It would still leave you with those plugins, I suppose, unless they also have to implement an ejection mechanism (hard to maintain).

[lacker]

I think there's a decent way to do this without any explicit support in create-react-app at all - just have your "plugin" compile sass to css files, and import your css from your javascript code as demonstrated in the create-react-app project. See #78 (comment) for an example gulp task that does this. I think that seems nice because then your css preprocessing is totally decoupled from the create-react-app environment.

[mxstbr]

Inb4 somebody makes create-react-app-plugins. Calling it!

[gaearon]

I think there's a decent way to do this without any explicit support in create-react-app at all - just have your "plugin" compile sass to css files, and import your css from your javascript code as demonstrated in the create-react-app project.

👍

I think this is what we’ll be recommending for SASS users.
Anybody wants to figure out a good command to put into Howto?
We could then close the issue about automatic integration for a few months until/if we decide to revisit this.

[mismith]

I agree with you @gaearon, @lacker's suggestion sounds like a good one. Might have to string something that up myself to test it out.