spfx-fast-serve 3.0: it's all about simplicity

12 May 2021 Sergei-Sergeev SharePoint Framework

- What?? Two major releases in just two weeks? Should I again migrate?

- Unfortunately, yes, you should migrate again. Fortunately, it's not that difficult. Additionally, 3.0 is a lot more flexible and simple.

Technically, it's the same codebase and functionality as 2.0, however recent findings made me available to drastically change the way of handling the "serve" command. Also, I removed some cli options (pnpm now is supported out-of-the-box, sp-rest-proxy is supported as an extension using webpack.extend.js). Since cli options were changed and the "serve" handling, I had to introduce a new major version. 

The new version gives the below benefits:

  • A lot easier configuration - you don't need a lot of webpack dependencies in your package.json, you don't even need webpack.js in your project tree. As a result, spfx-fast-serve adds only a small footprint to your SPFx project
  • A lot easier migration between SPFx versions - now you don't need to run spfx-fast-serve each time you migrate your project to the next SPFx version, instead, you just need to update a dependency in package.json
  • A lot easier bug fixing - now all fixes are delivered automatically as a regular npm module dependency, no need to update spfx-fast-serve and run it again

Check out what code is added to your gulpfile.js:

const { addFastServe } = require("spfx-fast-serve-helpers");
addFastServe(build);

Check out which additional dependencies you need in your pacakge.json:

"spfx-fast-serve-helpers": "~1.12.0"

1.12 - reflects SPFx version. If you need to migrate to a new SPFx version - you change the minor version for spfx-fast-serve-helpers and that's it.

And finally serve command:

"serve": "gulp bundle --custom-serve --max_old_space_size=4096 && fast-serve"

You can also browse the code of the basic sample here. It contains the bare minimum needed to run 3.x with SPFx 1.12.1.

Check out this doc to learn how to upgrade to the latest 3.x version. If you use spfx-fast-serve, I recommend you migrate to the 3.x version today, because all future updates will be based on the 3.x version only. This version is considered stable and no more major releases planned in the nearest future. 

Title image credits - Business vector created by freepik - www.freepik.com