html-webpack-plugin is outdated

[jantimon]

Version

4.5.9

The current used version of the html-webpack-plugin can be seen here: https://unpkg.com/@vue/cli-service/package.json

What is expected?

@vue/cli-service is using html-webpack-plugin 3.2.0 which is slower than html-webpack-plugin 4.5.0 and quite outdated (3 years since the release)

See all information about the html-webpack-plugin 4.x release here: https://dev.to/jantimon/html-webpack-plugin-4-has-been-released-125d

Furthermore for webpack 5.x there will be a html-webpack-plugin 5.x which is in alpha right now

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I am the author of the html-webpack-plugin - please let me know if I can be of any help to migrate to a supported version

[haoqunjiang]

Hi, thanks for reaching out! I've recently updated to html-webpack-plugin 4 in the dev branch, and an alpha version would be released very soon. It will use webpack 5 by default.

But for now, as the plugin ecosystem hasn't fully caught up with webpack 5, I would like the next version of Vue CLI to also support opting out to webpack 4 compilation.

So I'm wondering if html-webpack-plugin can still keep support for webpack 4?

[jantimon]

hey @sodatea

wow cool that sounds great :)
if you need any help e.g. with the template option or anything else just ping me.

Unfortunately webpack 5 is very different from webpack 4 and therefore it is very hard to maintain webpack 4 & 5 with the same html-webpack-plugin - the support plan is the following:

• html-webpack-plugin 3.x - out of support - fully compatible to webpack <= 4
• html-webpack-plugin 4.x - only bug fixes - fully compatible to webpack 4 & partialy compatible to webpack 5
• html-webpack-plugin 5.x - active branch - fully compatible to webpack 5

Please note that html-webpack-plugin 5 is still wip - the current progress can be seen here:
jantimon/html-webpack-plugin#1527

[haoqunjiang]

Besides dropping webpack 4 support, will there be any user-facing breaking changes in configuration options? If no, I think I can still find a way to support both versions 🤔

[jantimon]

that should be possible there are only 3 breaking changes for html-webpack-plugin 5:

• Drop support for appcache-webpack-plugin
• scripts are now loaded deferred in the tag to improve page load performance by default - This can be turned off by setting scriptLoading: ‘blocking’
• drop webpack 4 and node <= 10 support

[jantimon]

@sodatea html-webpack-plugin 5.x was officially released this week (it is the same code which was released as beta 1 month ago)

did you had any success upgrading vue-cli to a current html-webpack-plugin?

[jantimon]

wow so cool thanks a lot @sodatea

[thebrownfox]

@sodatea do you think you could release another alpha with this dependency updated? It stopped working this morning because of this dependency.

[haoqunjiang]

Yeah tomorrow.
Today is the last day of my Lunar New Year vacation and I haven't got the time to reach for my computer yet.

[thebrownfox]

Oh cool, thank you. Enjoy your free time 😊

[zhangchenna]

麻烦尽快更新吧，现在项目跑不起来了

ERROR  Failed to compile with 1 error                                                                                           下午3:11:04

 Error: The loader "/Volumes/Work/vue3-demo/node_modules/html-webpack-plugin/lib/loader.js!/Volumes/Work/vue3-demo/public/index.html" didn'  t return html.
 
 - index.js:336 HtmlWebpackPlugin.evaluateCompilationResult
   [vue3-demo]/[html-webpack-plugin]/index.js:336:24
 
 - index.js:243 
   [vue3-demo]/[html-webpack-plugin]/index.js:243:22
 
 - runMicrotasks
 
 - task_queues.js:93 processTicksAndRejections
   internal/process/task_queues.js:93:5
 
 - async Promise.all
 
 - async Promise.all

[jantimon]

@zhangchenna jantimon/html-webpack-plugin#1603

[zhangchenna]

@zhangchenna jantimon/html-webpack-plugin#1603

thank you

[haoqunjiang]

Fixed in alpha.4