Version 7 Alpha Discussion

[wa-rren-dev]

Any comments or issues with v7 alpha of nhsuk-frontend welcomed here.

Topics discussed:

• What does alpha mean?
• Should we use Prettier? - Pull down Integrate prettier #832 to try the current suggestion!
• Is it time to move away from Gulp?

[andymantell]

Thanks for getting the ball rolling on this stuff.

I think it would be useful to know what the criteria is for stuff to be in alpha. How does it differ to that on the main branch? And what's the criteria to move from alpha to main?

I think we need to be clear on this so that if I, or others, decide to install the alpha version on their services, we know what we're in for?

[wa-rren-dev]

Hi Andy, we've got no official line but in my mind it's a testing ground for anything really. The breaking change just comes from the removal of support for the older sass compilers. Dom's beta version is very much tailored to his team. Next week I'd like to get your tabs PR in there so whoever wants to can start playing.

I suppose the criteria would be that ideally there's supporting information for any new components in the service manual. So when we're ready for the service manual to use v7 that's when we merge it to main.

[andymantell]

Sounds good to me - requiring service manual criteria for main but not alpha makes a lot of sense.

[pflynny]

It would be great to get this working alongside the beta branch, as it was never intended for that to become specific for the navigation team's components; it was more just an opportunity to remove things from being siloed in the CMS.

[wa-rren-dev]

Welcome any thoughts on whether we move the linting / formatting to Prettier....?

[andymantell]

You still need eslint as it still covers some things that Prettier does not. It's really about making the basic eslint rules match prettier. I've got a setup I can share which works

[wa-rren-dev]

Thanks @andymantell could you share that?

[andymantell]

@wa-rren-dev Sure, I think this includes all the relevant bits:
https://gist.github.com/andymantell/058288dc66f657268e332cfc2dd6b136

[pflynny]

I agree with @andymantell's comments, it improves workflow if it is monitored during dev instead of pre-commit, so I'd back a switch to prettier.

[wa-rren-dev]

Just for visibility in this chat - there's a PR that can be played with at #832

[pflynny]

Is it time to move on from Gulp?

Gulp hasn't had a major release since 2019 and has very little activity on the repo. Some projects had pipelines failing due to an issue/security and I believe they created their own webpack build task.

[andymantell]

111 online is in the process of ditching gulp - we have moved to a fully webpack based solution with a handful of npm scripts for shuffling files around if necessary (Things like copying some images out of the nhsuk-frontend package into the right place). I haven't found anything so far that I need gulp for.