Calypso Build Tools

This package is a set of configuration files and scripts that allow for simple building of projects based on modern versions of JavaScript (ESNext and JSX) and SASS. It is meant to somewhat standardize the "dialect" of JavaScript that is used across Automattic's products, and to remove maintenance burden from individual contributors by providing a unified build toolset. It is hoped to be of use to the wider WordPress and JavaScript communities as well.

Features

calypso-build supports ESNext/JSX transpilation out of the box, as well as bundling of SASS files imported through @import style.scss statements, and automatic generation of RTL versions of those style files.

It is designed in a way that in its simplest form is very easy to invoke, with very little configuration overhead, yet can be customized in a more fine-grained way as a project's needs evolve.

Usage

Add add @automattic/calypso-build to your project's devDependencies by running

npm install --save-dev @automattic/calypso-build

Then, add a build script that invokes the calypso-build command:

	"scripts": {
		"build": "calypso-build ./src/editor.js"
	}

Simple as that -- the only argument you really need to pass to calypso-build is an entry point file for your project. By default, this will create a dist/ subfolder in your current working directory that will contain the built files -- typically one .js, one .css, and one .rtl.css file.

--output-path

If you want your built files to go elsewhere, you can customize the output path as follows:

	"scripts": {
		"build": "calypso-build --output-path='./build' ./src/editor.js"
	}

Multiple entry points

It's also possible to define more than one entry point (resulting in one bundle per entry point):

	"scripts": {
		"build": "calypso-build --output-path='./build' editor=./src/editor.js view=./src/view.js"
	}

Command Line Interface based on Webpack's

If you have some experience with Webpack, the format of these command line options will seem familiar to you. In fact, calypso-build is a a thin wrapper around Webpack's Command Line Interface (CLI) tool, pointing it to the webpack.config.js file that ships with @automattic/calypso-build.

It was our conscious decision to stick to Webpack's interface rather than covering it up with our own abstraction, since the build tool doesn't really add any conceptually different functionality, and our previous SDK approach showed that we ended up replicating features readily provided by Webpack anyway.

--env.WP option to automatically compute dependencies

That webpack.config.js introduces one rather WordPress/Gutenberg specific "environment" option, WP, which you can set as follows:

	"scripts": {
		"build": "calypso-build ./src/editor.js --env.WP"
	}

This will make Webpack use wordpress-external-dependencies-plugin to infer NPM packages that are commonly used by Gutenberg blocks (anything in the @wordpress/ scope, lodash, React, jQuery, etc) from the source files it bundles, and produce a .deps.json file containing an array of those dependencies for use with wp_enqueue_script. For more information, see wordpress-external-dependencies-plugin's docs.

Advanced Usage: Use own Webpack Config

If you find that the command line options provided by the calypso-build tool do not cut it for your project (e.g. if you need to run other Webpack loaders or plugins), you can use your own webpack.config.js file to extend the one provided by @automattic/calypso-build. The latter exports a function that can be called from your config file, allowing you to extend the resulting object:

const CopyWebpackPlugin = require( 'copy-webpack-plugin' );
const getBaseWebpackConfig = require( '@automattic/calypso-build/webpack.config.js' );

function getWebpackConfig( env, argv ) {
	const webpackConfig = getBaseWebpackConfig( env, argv );

	return {
		...webpackConfig,
		plugins: [
			...webpackConfig.plugins,
			new CopyWebpackPlugin( [
				{
					from: 'src/index.json',
					to: 'index.json',
				},
			] ),
		],
	};
}

module.exports = getWebpackConfig;

calypso-build will automatically pick up your webpack.config.js if it's in the same directory that the command is called from. You can customize that filename and location using the --config option:

	"scripts": {
		"build": "calypso-build --config='./config-files/webpack.config.js' ./src/editor.js"
	}

Advanced Usage: Use own Babel Config

It is also possible to customize how Babel transpiles a project. Simply add a babel.config.js to your project's root (i.e. the location you call npm run build from), and the build tool will pick it up over its own babel.config.js to transpile your project.

Using the wordpress-element Babel preset

This can be useful for building Gutenberg blocks, which use the @wordpress/element abstraction layer over React components, requiring a different set of transpilation rules from JSX. Conveniently, @automattic/calypso-build provides a Babel preset for this purpose:

module.exports = {
	extends: require.resolve( '@automattic/calypso-build/babel.config.js' ),
	presets: [ require( '@automattic/calypso-build/babel/wordpress-element' ) ],
};