The Big Frontend Working Group Meeting Thread

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Recap from the FWG meeting on 2022-03-24.

TLDW

Node 16 upgrade

As usual, we started with an upgrade to the Node 16 upgrade effort by @Binod_Pant_2U, where we took a look at The Sheet. Things are moving along nicely, and effort is being focused on the repos targetted for Nutmeg. In doing so, we identified two repos that were missing from the list: frontend-component-header and frontend-component-footer.

An issue was raised of whether to regenerate a given MFE’s package-lock.json using Node 16’s new dependency format/model. The consensus was that this should wait until “Phase 2” of the upgrade is under way, where Nodes 12 and 14 are to be removed from the test matrix. This will require frontend-* library repos (frontend-platform, build, etc) to relax their constraints, so that all dependency versions in use are encompassed.

Recap of the heisenbug in frontend-build

We revisited that frontend-build issue. It seems nobody was able to reproduce it. @AdamStankiewicz volunteered to get more information on the reference to NewRelic in the description, and also to check whether the issue is actually still happening.

A possible dependency licensing issue

A user in the forum brought our attention to the fact that a frontend-build dependency, @newrelic/publish-sourcemap, does not carry a license that explicitly allows redistribution. (Issue here.) One possible technical solution was suggested by @AdamStankiewicz: to use optional dependencies and conditional imports, with the drawback that this would require any and all repos using this dependency to make changes to their imports. Another was to, instead of relying on that package, to use the NewRelic API directly.

To try and avoid a needless technical rabbit hole, it was agreed that first we should find out if redistributing that library is allowed, or not.

Update on MFE gating proposal

There is some progress on the MFE gating proposal: there were no objections raised to the idea, so far, either by the BTR, Community, or Frontend working groups. The ball is now on my court to write the actual proposal in a reasonable place.

There was some discussion on how this proposal will affect Nutmeg. In short, it won’t, and it doesn’t need to. The idea is to formalize a process that, in practice, already happens: the BTR group already vets MFEs. What the proposed process will do is make all other parties aware of the bar MFEs need to pass, so that they can spend time on getting MFEs ready up front - instead of waiting for a veto.

A look at the board

We took a look at the board, and only one thing jumped out that hadn’t been discussed before: one ToDo issue was actually done, so it was marked as such.

Participants

Next meeting

The next meeting will be held on Thursday, April 7th at 15:00 UTC (Timezone converter). The draft agenda can be found on #93 on the board.

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