@dl748 Thank you for submitting this PR!

This is a live comment which I will keep updated.

This PR touches some part of DefinitelyTyped infrastructure, so a DT maintainer will need to review it. This is rare — did you mean to do this?

2 packages in this PR

• appcache-webpack-plugin on npm, on unpkg
• webpack (probably deleted!) on npm, on unpkg
  • 22 removed owners: @tkqubo, @bumbleblym, @bcherny, @tommytroylin, @mohsen1, @jcreamer898, @alan-agius4, @dennispg, @christophehurpeau, @ZSkycat, @johnnyreilly, @rwaskiewicz, @kuehlein, @grgur, @rubenspgcavalcante, @andersk, @ofhouse, @danielthank, @sasurau4, @dionshihk, @peterblazejewicz, @spamshaker

Code Reviews

Because this is a widely-used package, a DT maintainer will need to review it before it can be merged.

Status

• ✅ No merge conflicts
• ❌ Continuous integration tests have passed
• ❌ A DT maintainer needs to approve changes which affect DT infrastructure (notNeededPackages.json)

Once every item on this list is checked, I'll ask you for permission to merge and publish the changes.

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🔔 @peterblazejewicz @tkqubo @bumbleblym @bcherny @tommytroylin @mohsen1 @jcreamer898 @alan-agius4 @dennispg @christophehurpeau @ZSkycat @johnnyreilly @rwaskiewicz @kuehlein @grgur @rubenspgcavalcante @andersk @ofhouse @danielthank @sasurau4 @dionshihk @spamshaker — please review this PR in the next few days. Be sure to explicitly select Approve or Request Changes in the GitHub UI so I know what's going on.

@dl748 The CI build failed! Please review the logs for more information.

Once you've pushed the fixes, the build will automatically re-run. Thanks!

👋 Hi there! I’ve run some quick measurements against master and your PR. These metrics should help the humans reviewing this PR gauge whether it might negatively affect compile times or editor responsiveness for users who install these typings.

Let’s review the numbers, shall we?

appcache-webpack-plugin/v1.4

It looks like nothing changed too much. I won’t post performance data again unless it gets worse.

zip-webpack-plugin/v3.0

It looks like nothing changed too much. I won’t post performance data again unless it gets worse.

I think it is by far to early to remove the types from Webpack v4 because the maintainers are still accepting PRs for it.
Wrote my 2 cents on this topic here: #48803 (comment)

AFAIK, thats not how types works. You mark what version of the package has its own typings, in this case 5.0.0+. Versions under 5 would still use @types/webpack

You can see here https://github.com/DefinitelyTyped/DefinitelyTyped/pull/49755/files#diff-a275c2eae7b8f788a52327e76809026ee1bc5ea614393806c8f3cbab07202621
in the notNeededPackages.json file.

Thank you for owning this! This issue is particularly problematic where plugins still require @types/webpack but developers have upgraded to webpack@^5. Having a clear semver separation is going to be fantastic.

@dl748 What you propose here, is basically deleting the types/webpack directory from this repository. That is how deprecating types in DefinitelyTyped works.
That means:

• No one has the ability to create new PRs for @types/webpack package anymore.
• We are unable to publish new updates for @types/webpack package.
• Already released versions on npm (https://www.npmjs.com/package/@types/webpack?activeTab=versions) are not affected, because they will remain available on npm.

To clarify here: I am very aware that Webpack v5 comes bundled with it's own types (In fact Webpack v4 package also already contains types for basic things like configuration).
So we will never release a @types/webpack@5.x.x or add types to this package that are related to Webpack 5.

But the release of Webpack 5 does not automatically mean that Webpack 4 is now deprecated.
In fact, the Webpack team is still accepting PRs for Webpack 4, so when something is changed in Webpack 4 we have no chance to bring those changes back to @types/webpack when we deprecate it too early.

To better understand this issue pls have a look at the actual download stats of @types/webpack on npm: We had 4,424,425 downloads (number still growing) in the last week, so there are still a ton of projects out there that rely on Webpack 4.
That's because @types/webpack is not only used by developers who want their webpack config typed. It is mostly used for development of Webpack plugins and loaders.

Currently authors of plugins and loaders are busy to make their stuff compatible for Webpack 5 API but some of them choose the path to support Webpack 4 & 5 at the same time. For them it can be critical to publish new releases of @types/webpack to support their development (E.g. see #48857).

I know the downside of this approach is that developers that are blindly typing npm i --save webpack @types/webpack end up having webpack@^5 and @types/webpack^4 installed. But when they look at the package.json they always see a semver major version mismatch (5.x.x vs 4.x.x) between these two packages which should indicate that they are not compatible.
And hopefully they google it, find this thread and simply uninstall @types/webpack.

@ofhouse All good points.

The issue I personally ran into was with a couple of plugins that used@types/webpack, but the project uses webpack@5. That caused a couple of issues that required skipLibCheck: true, which isn't a great scenario.

Is there a way to support v4 through DefinitelyTyped and v5 via Webpack? I wonder if there's a simple way out without rewriting definitions.

I agree that dropping types from here would be harmful.

@ofhouse All good points.

The issue I personally ran into was with a couple of plugins that used@types/webpack, but the project uses webpack@5. That caused a couple of issues that required skipLibCheck: true, which isn't a great scenario.

Is there a way to support v4 through DefinitelyTyped and v5 via Webpack? I wonder if there's a simple way out without rewriting definitions.

I agree that dropping types from here would be harmful.

I have the reverse issue, can't update plugin typings to 5.0+ because any import { type } from 'webpack' forcefully pulls in @types/webpack instead of webpack@5 types because @types/webpack still exists in the build system.

Thereby, errors of 'webpack doesn't export that member' and manually deleting @types/webpack fixes the issue. It makes it impossible to update any "@types/my-webpack-plugin" to 5.0