Compilation modules and chunk parsing about license-webpack-plugin HOT 5 CLOSED

I couldn't find any API documentation for a lot of the webpack internals. I relied mostly on experimentation and looking at typescript typings files to figure it out.

If you want to detect a package, a less hacky approach I took in v2 of license-webpack-plugin is to keep scanning directories upward until you reach a package.json file. For example, if a file comes from /a/b/c/d.js, then the plugin searches first for /a/b/c/package.json, /a/b/package.json until it reaches filesystem root. You wouldn't want this to happen to your project's package.json file though, as that would not be third party code. The plugin relies on webpack's compiler.context to detect this situation. I'm not sure if context is ever null in webpack v4 (I know it could be null in previous releases of webpack). If you find that compiler.context is null, you could try defaulting it to process.cwd() (which is what webpack v4 does internally) as that usually corresponds to your project's "root" directory.

Hope that helps.

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My problem is that module.context in v4 can be null, while in v3 it always referred to the path or directory of the required/imported file before. What i could do with that is simply search this path for node_modules strings, and then take the directory after the last node_modules string found in the path (e.g. a file \mnt\d\projects\licensePlugin\node_modules\a\node_modules\b\c.js belongs to module b).

After doing that, i simply threw out duplicate modules and was basically done - having the node_modules name and path to every included module. From there i can then read the package.json, check for /^licen[cs]e/i files and more.

It is interesting that you did not find any good documentation as well. I'll probably link this issue and discussion to some webpack folks because i think documentation on this is really really needed.

Using the webpack typings provides a tad more info than simply logging Object.keys of compilation, compiler and assorted object instances - but does it really help you being absolutely sure that your plugin never misses a node_module that is included in the build artifacts?

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My question to webpack authors, contributors and maintainers would be:
What is the best hook and the simplest way with that hook to get a list of every node_module that is at least partially compiled into the build output (regardless of webpack settings like chunking or others).

And why is this not obvious from the plugin documentation?

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There is no way I can be absolutely sure that the plugin doesn't miss a node_module, as I have no official answer from the webpack team for this. I have mostly relied on bug reports / pull requests to fill in the gaps. You can see https://github.com/xz64/license-webpack-plugin/blob/master/src/WebpackModuleFileIterator.ts to see how I do it. (note: it doesn't need module.context, as it works with absolute filenames which webpack provides)

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I understand - thanks for your answers & clarification! 👍

I would love to have an official opinion by the webpack team on this - OSS licensing is far too significant in todays software development to be unsure about something like this imho.

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