Webpacker: Rails `assets:precompile` does not compile the assets to `public/packs`

[vtno]

My Env:
Ruby 2.5.0
Rails 5.2.0
RAILS_ENV : production
NODE_ENV : not set
Webpacker: master branch
Node: v10.1.0
Yarn: 1.7.0

I just upgraded to webpacker4 and tries to run assets:precompile which should run wepacker:compile hook and output them in public/packs.

The log actually tells me that it gets compiled

Using /[APP-PATH]/config/webpacker.yml file for setting up webpack paths
Compiling…
Compiled all packs in /[APP-PATH]/public/packs

Nothing gets compiled. No public/packs folder. I also tried follow the instruction in https://github.com/rails/webpacker/issues/1494

• Deleting bin/webpack and runwebpacker:binstubs
• Deleting public/assets and public/packs

but it still doesn't do anything accept outputting the log.

Now the weird part is when I run webpacker:compile it actually gets compiled correctly. (it also shows the same log)

Do I need to run webpacker:compile separately now? or I do I need to change some config etc?
Please advice.

My webpacker.yml (I use app/webpack folder instead of app/javascript/packs)

# Note: You must restart bin/webpack-dev-server for changes to take effect
default: &default
  source_path: app/webpack
  source_entry_path: "./"
  public_output_path: packs
  cache_path: tmp/cache/webpacker

  # Additional paths webpack should lookup modules
  # ['app/assets', 'engine/foo/app/assets']
  resolved_paths: [__dirname, './app/webpack/libs', './app/webpack/utils', './app/webpack']

  # Reload manifest.json on all requests so we reload latest compiled packs
  cache_manifest: false

  extensions:
    - .js
    - .sass
    - .scss
    - .css
    - .module.sass
    - .module.scss
    - .module.css
    - .png
    - .svg
    - .gif
    - .jpeg
    - .jpg

development:
  <<: *default
  compile: false

  # Reference: https://webpack.js.org/configuration/dev-server/
  dev_server:
    https: false
    host: localhost
    port: 3035
    public: localhost:3035
    hmr: false
    # Inline should be set to true if using HMR
    inline: true
    overlay: true
    compress: true
    disable_host_check: true
    use_local_ip: false
    quiet: false
    headers:
      'Access-Control-Allow-Origin': '*'
    watch_options:
      ignored: /node_modules/


test:
  <<: *default
  compile: true

  # Compile test packs to a separate directory
  public_output_path: packs-test

production:
  <<: *default

  # Production depends on precompilation of packs prior to booting for performance.
  compile: false

  # Cache manifest.json for performance
  cache_manifest: true

staging:
  <<: *default

  # Production depends on precompilation of packs prior to booting for performance.
  compile: false

  # Cache manifest.json for performance
  cache_manifest: true

[vtno]

After some deep investigations, It was my package.json that causes the problem. My webpack-cli is in devDependencies so when it's deploying to production it's not getting installed by yarn.

I think when yarn doesn't install webpack-cli it should throw some kind of error instead of telling that it got compiled in public/packs path but actually there's nothing.

[codebycliff]

I had this exact same issue. FWIW, it only started for me when upgrading webpack-cli from 2.1.4 to 2.1.5. It works fine on version 2.1.4, but _any_ version after that didn't work for me. Moving the dependency out of devDependencies fixed the issue for me.

[jeffsee55]

Thanks @vtno - that worked for me. FWIW I'm on webpack-cli 3.0.8 so versions didn't matter, it was just moving it out of devDependencies and into dependencies

Looks like the messaging could be improved from here https://github.com/rails/webpacker/blob/master/lib/webpacker/compiler.rb#L69