Webpack Plugin

The way we gather stats from your webpack builds is via our open source plugin. This plugin simply gathers some metadata about the build from source control, extracts the webpack stats object, and uploads the payload to our service for processing.

We always filter out your source from the stats object, and do not have access to your source code.

Install the webpack plugin

Once you have a project created, and a project_token in hand you can get your data flowing by installing and configuring our webpack plugin.

npm install --save @packtracker/webpack-plugin

Configure and push your first commit

Include the plugin in your configuration along with your project token.

const PacktrackerPlugin = require('@packtracker/webpack-plugin')
​
module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    new PacktrackerPlugin({
      project_token: '<your packtracker project token>',
      upload: true,
      fail_build: true
    })
  ]
}

If your are using Webpacker for Ruby on Rails, Laravel Mix, or Next.js you can reference the following documentation for a more relevant configuration example.

​

Once your configuration is in place, run your webpack build and we'll take care of the rest.

Uploading in CI

The uploadoption above tells the plugin whether or not to upload your build stats when running webpack. By default, this option is set to false to prevent accidental uploading from your local machine. If the upload option is left false, the plugin will do nothing.

Once you see your stats are uploading, it is common to only upload when building your assets in a CI environment or during deployment. You can also omit this option, and set the PT_UPLOAD environment variable on a per environment basis or check your CI provider's environment variables to control the upload of your stats.

For example...

const PacktrackerPlugin = require('@packtracker/webpack-plugin')
​
module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    new PacktrackerPlugin({
      project_token: '<your packtracker project token>',
      upload: process.env.CI === 'true'
    })
  ]
}

You could can also set any packtracker configuration option (including the project_token !) from an environment variable. In this case, if your environment has the PT_UPLOAD environment variable set to "true" the plugin will upload. See our complete list of options and environment variables.

Using automation for continuous feedback

While not a requirement, packtracker is most useful in the presence of build automation, whether that be a simple deployment script, a platform as a service, or a CI/CD service that runs with every commit. When automation is in place to handle uploading your statistics you gain a much more reliable mechanism for uploading and reporting. This also helps you take advantage of our GitHub Pull Request Checks.