a webpack-api library should be added ? 🤔

[xiaoxiaojx]

👋 hi, all

This idea comes from the napi and node-addon-api implementations

In the plugins I've written, I've often written them in the following way

if ("hooks" in compiler) {
      // webpack 4
      eventName = trainCaseToCamelCase(eventName);
      if (compiler.hooks[eventName]) {
          compiler.hooks[eventName][isAsync ? "tapAsync" : "tap"](
              pluginName,
              func
          );
      }
  } else {
      // webpack 2/3
      compiler.plugin(eventName, func);
  }

or implement a dynamically increasing entry like nextjs

// webpack 4

const dep = MultiEntryPlugin.createDependency(entry, name)
compilation.addEntry(context, dep, name, err => {
    if (err) return reject(err)
    resolve()
})

// webpack 5

const EntryOptionPlugin = require('webpack/lib/EntryOptionPlugin')
EntryOptionPlugin.entryDescriptionToOptions(compiler, name, {
    import: entry
})

Having a stable api library would reduce the cost for plugin developers and make it easy for them to write plugins that are compatible with all versions.

What about this 💡 idea ? 🤔

If feasible, I hope to join this interesting project ...

[alexander-akait]

No need, we don't have a lot of major release and keep API as long as possible, it is normal when major releases have breaking changes

[alexander-akait]

And time to drop webpack v2/v3 and v4 support, official plugins and loaders already done this (most of them)

[xiaoxiaojx]

My heart is broken 💔

[alexander-akait]

Create another package requires a lot of time for support and compatibility, unfortunately we do not have such capabilities

[xiaoxiaojx]

This needs to collect the high-frequency problems currently used, or other plugin developers to integrate the compatible processing solutions written here ......