Allow custom ignore for webpack plugin users

[NaridaL]

Preflight Checklist

• I have read the contribution documentation for this project.
• I agree to follow the code of conduct that this project follows, as appropriate.
• I have searched the issue tracker for a bug that matches the one I want to file, without success.

Issue Details

• Electron Forge Version:

6.0.0-beta.47

• Electron Version:

v7.1.10

• Operating System:
• Last Known Working Electron Forge version::

Expected Behavior

webpack plugin should respect the externals property of the webpack config

Actual Behavior

It doesn't

To Reproduce

I'm using selenium-webdriver in my app (no, not for testing...), which doesn't compile with webpack (see SeleniumHQ/selenium#7726 ). I've added it to webpack's externals, which work fine during development:

module.exports = {
  // Put your normal webpack config below here
  resolve: {
    // Add `.ts` and `.tsx` as a resolvable extension.
    extensions: ['.ts', '.tsx', '.js'],
  },
  module: {
    rules,
  },
  externals: [
    function(context, request, callback) {
      if (
        [
          'selenium-webdriver',
          'selenium-webdriver/chrome',
        ].includes(request)
      ) {
        return callback(null, 'commonjs ' + request)
      }
      callback()
    },
  ],
}

Unfortunately, when I package it, all the node_modules are removed, and the app doesn't start...

The webpack plugin should either understand the externals configuration, or it should include an option to manually whitelist particular dependencies.

Additional Information

[malept]

This sounds like a duplicate of #1250.

[NaridaL]

@malept

This is specifically about a module which won't work with webpack.

The other issue seems to have found a workaround by not externalizing it?

[malept]

From #1447 (comment):

I've starting trying to work around my issue by moving all of the dependencies, except the one I want bundled, into devDependencies and overriding electronPackager.ignore. This makes sense because the dependencies really are used only during development as "sources" for webpack.

Maybe this approach should be considered as the "official" way of doing it? It would require less magic in the webpack plugin and therefore much more intuitive.

I don't think the approach to put everything bundled by webpack into devDependencies, mostly because it goes against what most people learn about how dependencies vs devDependencies works.

I propose to add a config option to WebpackPluginConfig, includeExternals, which would be an array of glob patterns that would get copied over during packaging.

[NaridaL]

@malept What do people learn about dev/Dependencies?

I think there are two main use cases for webpack. Webapps, where usually you only deploy the generated bundle, and don't care about the package. And packages where webpack is used to compile only the package sources and not dependencies, in which case you do want dependencies as non-dev dependencies.

Electron packages don't seem to fit in either category.

In any case, manually specifying the packages which should get copied is problematic, as you also need to manually specify all the dependencies which need to get copied. For example, selenium-webdriver has 4 dependencies, which also have their own deps, which would all need to be manually added to the includeExternals option.

Electron-Packager already seems to have logic which resolves the required dependencies tree from package.dependencies

[tsvetilian-ty]

Is there progress with this issue? At the moment we are facing the same problem... Do you @NaridaL and @malept have any workarounds?

[NaridaL]

@tsvetilian-ty #1451 (comment)

[barbalex]

@malept I personally would not care how I have to place my dependencies in package.json, as long as this hard problem is solved. This problem is a real blocker for webpack noobs like me

[malept]

Fixed in #2424