And the beauty in phoenix is that you can easily do so. I‘d expect that far fewer people will switch from their existing pipelines to esbuild than for the last asset pipeline switch from brunch to webpack. It‘s just no longer the phoenix teams problem if things break, which it should never really have been in the first place.
LostKobrakai
sodapopcan
Can someone speak to the “advanced features” that we would be missing from webpack? From my understanding, esbuild can replace webpack, so why wouldn’t one not be able to use Coffeescript or Slime? I’ve been really looking forward to this release specifically for esbuild and heex.
0
sodapopcan
Well, I’m sort of answering my own question now that I’m RTFM’ing 
(like some packages need node to run which, ya, duh me). But I wouldn’t mind hearing specific experiences switching to esbuild if anyone is willing to share.
0
whoiswentz
stefanchrobot
Just updated my app to Phoenix 1.6.0-rc.0. Went pretty smoothly, even though I had to bump Elixir to 1.12 (updating Dockerfile, etc.). I started off without Webpack and had my hand-rolled esbuild pipeline, but having it wrapped with an Elixir package is sweet.
One thing that I had to figure out was how to manage static assets. With the new setup:
- Put static assets straight into
/priv/static, - Build tools build assets into
/priv/static/assetswhich is.gitignored.
If you want to throw TailwindCSS/UI and/or Alpine into the mix, here’s @josevalim’s approach.
Here’s a diff of a fresh project generated with 1.5 vs 1.6.
5
beno
I think you are OK as long as you don’t have to rely on a build.js script as described here.
I managed to figure out that you also need a NODE_PATH=../deps environment variable and then esbuild will see the phoenix js modules, but then I get stuck on this error:
deps/phoenix_live_view/assets/js/phoenix_live_view/dom_patch.js:20:21: error: Could not resolve "morphdom" (mark it as external to exclude it from the bundle)
I can see that morphdom is one of the dependencies in phoenix_live_view but how does esbuild ensure it gets installed? Oh how I dislike javascript.
0
chrismccord
Creator of Phoenix
@LostKobrakai already answered our motivations and the benefits very well, but I want to point out that folks are free to continue to use their favorite webpack configuration (or any other build tool). Phoenix was never Webpack-aware, we simply generated the config for you. The phoenix endpoint watchers configuration will gladly start any cli’s for you, so by all means if webpack suits your workflow then continue to use it 
4
beno
Thanks, this makes total sense. But regardless, when I setup a new 1.6 live app from scratch, follow the build.js instructions, without any further modifications or plugins, I run into the error I mentioned above.
Could not resolve “phoenix_html”
So I am sure there is still something missing there, I shall file a bug report on GitHub if this has not been done already.
Instant edit: @josevalim to the rescue! I love this stuff.
https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix/commit/b793ba90a2a9a573d09dcdc0f164e52cb9df1bf1
Second edit: finally all working now, but now run into
Dynamic require of “…” is not supported
So all in all I feel esbuild tries to pretend the messy world of javascript is not all that messy. I would be very surprised if this indeed leads to fewer support issues, but hopefully it does since it has no other benefits that I can see.
0
chrismccord
Creator of Phoenix
You are being extremely dismissive, even after the post outlines the benefits, others in this thread (myself included) have expanded on the benefits, and José has offered help. If node-free js and css bundling and minification with guaranteed repeated builds years in the future is not a “benefit that you can see”, then there is no productive way for you to remain involved in this conversation 
23
beno
Well from my point of view I discovered an omission in the documentation and after getting it all to work esbuild breaks my application. Being node-less is not something I care about all that much. But I will happily leave the conversation to the ones who do. Bye.
0