React-ing to the need for a modern MapGuide viewer (Part 12): A positive cascading effect

The move to Jest for our testing/coverage needs has opened up some opportunities that were previously roadblocks.

Mainly, we can finally upgrade to Webpack 2. Previously, we were roadblocked because the karma runner just wouldn't work with webpack 2 configurations. Also unlike earlier attempts with Webpack 2 beta releases, this upgrade to Webpack 2 was less painful and more importantly, the bundle size remained the same.

Also OpenLayers recently released 4.0.0, which also includes experimental ES2015 modules, the ES2015 module facilitates a "pay for only what you use" model which is great for us as we don't necessarily want to use the kitchen sink, only the parts of the library we actually use. It turns out based on their webpack example that it requires Webpack 2 to work as Webpack 1 will include said modules verbatim causing most browsers to blow up on the various ES2015 language constructs (like imports).

Well, how convenient that we just upgraded to Webpack 2! Switching over to the new ol package and its ES2015 modules, and making the required fixes in our codebase to use this new package, and checking the final production bundle size shows promise.

That is 150kb smaller than our current production bundle! Once other libraries we're using adopt ES2015 modules, we can expect even more weight loss.