Developing Webpacker

It's a little trickier for Rails developers to work on the JS code of a project like rails/webpacker. So here are some tips!

Use some test app

For example, for React on Rails Changes, I'm using shakacode/react_on_rails_tutorial_with_ssr_and_hmr_fast_refresh. This directory is the TEST_APP_DIR.

Fork rails/webpacker

Let's call the rails/webpacker directory WEBPACKER_DIR which has rails/webpacker's package.json.

Changing the Package

Setup with Yalc

Use yalc unless you like yak shaving weird errors.

1. In WEBPACKER_DIR, run yalc publish
2. In TEST_APP_DIR, run yalc link @rails/webpacker

Update the Package Code

1. Make some JS change in WEBPACKER_DIR
2. Run yalc push and your changes will be pushed to your TEST_APP_DIR's node_modules.
3. You may need to run yarn in TEST_APP_DIR if you added or removed dependencies of rails/webpacker.

Updating the Ruby Code

For the Ruby part, just change the gem reference TEST_APP_DIR, like:

gem "webpacker", path: "../../forks/webpacker"