Dependency extraction webpack plugin: use `package.json` `wpScript` value to determine bundling by simison · Pull Request #79945 · WordPress/gutenberg

simison · 2026-07-07T13:39:08Z

What?

Follow-up to convo at

Replaces the hardcoded BUNDLED_PACKAGES list in @wordpress/dependency-extraction-webpack-plugin with package metadata (wpScript: false) as the source of truth for bundled packages.

When wpScript is true or missing, the package gets externalised. Thus, one needs to specifically opt-in to bundling just like previously with BUNDLED_PACKAGES, or use Webpack configs like these:

DependencyExtractionPlugin: {
	requestMap: {
		'@wordpress/theme': { external: false },
	},
},

Updates the changelog workflow to treat @wordpress/undo-manager as externalized (it was incorrectly bundled before, see notes).
Adds wpScript: false to the legacy bundled packages that lacked it.
Keeps existing wpScript: false in @wordpress/widget-dashboard and @wordpress/widget-primitives; these were not listed in BUNDLED_PACKAGES previously but are now effectively bundled. They're pretty new experimental packages, so I'm assuming we want to keep bundling them?

Why?

BUNDLED_PACKAGES duplicated logic that wp-build already derives from package.json, so the two bundlers could drift. We already had a concrete example: @wordpress/undo-manager was listed as bundled in dependency-extraction, but wp-build externalizes it because it has wpScript: true.

Using wpScript: false makes bundling explicit and keeps webpack (@wordpress/scripts) and esbuild (wp-build) aligned on the same rule: packages are bundled only when they opt out of WordPress script registration.

How?

I'm mostly duplicating the logic from WP Build to the Dependency Extraction plugin: I could make one depend on another or move the utils to yet another shared package, but since these are just script tools, it felt like copying is fine. (Also, @wordpress/build is ESM + Node >=20.10, while dependency-extraction supports Node >=18.12 and is CJS.)

I added wpScript: false to packages we're continuing to bundle.

Testing Instructions

npm run test:unit packages/dependency-extraction-webpack-plugin/test/util.js
Confirm bundled set is unchanged except:
- @wordpress/undo-manager, which is now externalised.
- @wordpress/widget-dashboard, which is now bundled (already had wpScript: false).
- @wordpress/widget-primitives , which is now bundled (already had wpScript: false).

Use of AI Tools

yes

….json

github-actions · 2026-07-07T13:39:19Z

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If you're merging code through a pull request on GitHub, copy and paste the following into the bottom of the merge commit message.

Co-authored-by: simison <simison@git.wordpress.org>
Co-authored-by: aduth <aduth@git.wordpress.org>
Co-authored-by: manzoorwanijk <manzoorwanijk@git.wordpress.org>
Co-authored-by: anomiex <bjorsch@git.wordpress.org>

To understand the WordPress project's expectations around crediting contributors, please review the Contributor Attribution page in the Core Handbook.

github-actions · 2026-07-07T13:48:00Z

Size Change: 0 B

Total Size: 7.67 MB

_{compressed-size-action}

simison · 2026-07-07T14:11:02Z

Keeps existing wpScript: false in @wordpress/widget-dashboard and @wordpress/widget-primitives; these were not listed in BUNDLED_PACKAGES previously but are now effectively bundled. They're pretty new experimental packages, so I'm assuming we want to keep bundling them?

@retrofox could you confirm if we want to bundle these packages? That helps to do bigger API changes for now, rather than externalizing to Gutenberg via wp.* global.

github-actions · 2026-07-07T14:40:38Z

Flaky tests detected in 7236183.
Some tests passed with failed attempts. The failures may not be related to this commit but are still reported for visibility. See the documentation for more information.

🔍 Workflow run URL: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/actions/runs/28872527954
📝 Reported issues:

[Flaky Test] activate block theme when live previewing in edit mode #77712 in /test/e2e/specs/site-editor/activate-theme.spec.js
[Flaky Test] can use appender in site editor sidebar list view #79632 in /test/e2e/specs/site-editor/navigation-sidebar-list-view.spec.js

Copilot

Pull request overview

Updates @wordpress/dependency-extraction-webpack-plugin to determine which @wordpress/* packages should remain bundled based on each package’s package.json metadata (wpScript: false), replacing the previous hardcoded BUNDLED_PACKAGES list. This aligns dependency extraction behavior with wp-build and updates affected packages/workflows accordingly.

Changes:

Replace the hardcoded bundled list with runtime resolution of wpScript from each package’s package.json.
Add wpScript: false (and changelog entries) to legacy bundled packages that lacked it.
Update the changelog-check workflow list to treat @wordpress/undo-manager as externalized and include widget packages.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 18 out of 18 changed files in this pull request and generated no comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
packages/views/package.json	Marks `@wordpress/views` as bundled via `wpScript: false`.
packages/views/CHANGELOG.md	Documents the `wpScript: false` metadata change.
packages/style-runtime/package.json	Marks `@wordpress/style-runtime` as bundled via `wpScript: false`.
packages/style-runtime/CHANGELOG.md	Documents the `wpScript: false` metadata change.
packages/interface/package.json	Marks `@wordpress/interface` as bundled via `wpScript: false`.
packages/interface/CHANGELOG.md	Documents the `wpScript: false` metadata change.
packages/icons/package.json	Marks `@wordpress/icons` as bundled via `wpScript: false`.
packages/icons/CHANGELOG.md	Documents the `wpScript: false` metadata change.
packages/fields/package.json	Marks `@wordpress/fields` as bundled via `wpScript: false`.
packages/fields/CHANGELOG.md	Documents the `wpScript: false` metadata change.
packages/dataviews/package.json	Marks `@wordpress/dataviews` as bundled via `wpScript: false`.
packages/dataviews/CHANGELOG.md	Documents the `wpScript: false` metadata change.
packages/admin-ui/package.json	Marks `@wordpress/admin-ui` as bundled via `wpScript: false`.
packages/admin-ui/CHANGELOG.md	Documents the `wpScript: false` metadata change.
packages/dependency-extraction-webpack-plugin/lib/util.js	Implements bundled detection by reading `wpScript` from resolved `package.json`.
packages/dependency-extraction-webpack-plugin/test/util.js	Adds tests for bundled vs externalized behavior based on `wpScript`.
packages/dependency-extraction-webpack-plugin/CHANGELOG.md	Notes the change from hardcoded list to `wpScript: false` metadata.
.github/workflows/check-package-changelogs.yml	Updates the workflow package list to match the new bundling/externalization set.

Comments suppressed due to low confidence (1)

packages/dependency-extraction-webpack-plugin/lib/util.js:182

isBundledPackageForScripts() runs before the @wordpress/ namespace check, so scoped non-WordPress imports (e.g. @foo/bar) will still trigger require.resolve(<pkg>/package.json) and JSON parsing even though they can never be externalized here; this can add unnecessary I/O during builds.

	if ( isBundledPackageForScripts( request ) ) {
		return undefined;
	}

	if ( request.startsWith( WORDPRESS_NAMESPACE ) ) {

aduth · 2026-07-14T20:11:24Z

+ */
+function findPackageRoot( startDir ) {
+	let current = startDir;
+	const root = path.parse( current ).root;


Is there a more reasonable stopping point we should stop at, like cwd or project root somehow, rather than filesystem root? I suppose in practice this isn't much of an actual concern.

aduth · 2026-07-14T20:16:00Z

+ * @param {string|null} resolveDir      Optional directory context for resolution.
+ * @return {{wpScript?: boolean, wpScriptModuleExports?: string|Object}|null} Package metadata when resolvable.
+ */
+function getPackageInfo( fullPackageName, resolveDir = null ) {


There's a lot here that repeats from what we have in @wordpress/build as well. As there, a lot of this will be simplified with findPackageJSON in newer versions of Node. We could always refactor later, but with recent almost-unblocking of #72973 (comment), we could also consider to wait? Not sure how much that helps simplify this code.

Toward simplifying the shared code, I wonder if there's libraries that help or if we should create our own. Some combination of resolve-pkg, read-pkg, and/or find-up for example.

We could use the approach that we used in license check

gutenberg/packages/scripts/utils/license.js

Lines 387 to 389 in 1222f40

function resolvePackagePath( packageName, fromDir ) {

// Use findPackageJSON when available (Node.js 22.14.0+)

if ( findPackageJSON ) {

aduth · 2026-07-14T20:19:55Z

 		},
 		"./package.json": "./package.json"
 	},
+	"wpScript": false,


I can appreciate the explicitness, but do we need these explicit false values? Or just lean on this being an opt-in behavior that defaults to false ?

IMHO, this explicitness is good, but I think the extraction plugin should not expect the property to be explicitly set to false.

manzoorwanijk · 2026-07-16T08:00:32Z

Heads up on a downstream compatibility concern from Jetpack. CC: @anomiex

I asked Claude to see how this can affect Jetpack monorepo:

Jetpack consumes this plugin via @automattic/jetpack-webpack-config, and its requestToExternal returns undefined for anything outside our own request map — so the default bundling logic applies across every webpack-built Jetpack project.

The issue is that the plugin version and the package versions don't necessarily move together outside this monorepo. Our lockfile currently has DEWP 6.50.0 alongside @wordpress/icons@15.1.0, dataviews@17.1.0, fields@0.42.0, interface@9.35.0, admin-ui@2.5.0, style-runtime@0.5.0, and views@1.17.0 — none of which carry wpScript yet. If DEWP updates ahead of those (which our Renovate grouping makes likely, since they're in separate groups), each of them silently flips from bundled to a wp.icons / wp-icons external that WordPress never registers. That fails at runtime rather than at build time, so it's unlikely to be caught by CI.

The reverse order is harmless — packages gaining wpScript: false under the old plugin still match BUNDLED_PACKAGES.

Would it be possible to bump the peer/minimum versions of the affected packages in @wordpress/scripts, or otherwise document a minimum version, so the metadata the plugin now reads is guaranteed to be present? Failing open to "externalize" on a missing field is the risky default for consumers pinning versions independently.

Separately: is there a stable replacement for the BUNDLED_PACKAGES list as a reference? We link to it from our Renovate config to keep our bundled-package group in sync, and that anchor goes away with this change.

anomiex · 2026-07-16T14:25:03Z

The issue is that the plugin version and the package versions don't necessarily move together outside this monorepo.

It gets even worse if you consider sub-dependencies. We still have @wordpress/icons@10.32.0 in one dependency chain, which has just today finally had a (hopefully) usable release with a fix for the breaking changes in icons v11.

Co-authored-by: Manzoor Wani <manzoorwani.jk@gmail.com>

simison · 2026-07-17T17:17:32Z

is there a stable replacement for the BUNDLED_PACKAGES list as a reference? We link to it from our Renovate config to keep our bundled-package group in sync, and that anchor goes away with this change.

I think it would be useful for all sorts of reasons to document somewhere, so might need generating somehow.

simison added 3 commits July 7, 2026 10:51

Dependency extraction webpack plugin: determine bundling from package…

779be9b

….json

Use createRequire() (align with what WP Build does)

59aa227

Be more explicit about bundling vs not bundling

80752c2

simison requested review from aduth, retrofox and youknowriad July 7, 2026 13:39

simison requested review from desrosj, gigitux, ntsekouras and oandregal as code owners July 7, 2026 13:39

simison added the [Tool] Dependency Extraction Webpack Plugin /packages/dependency-extraction-webpack-plugin label Jul 7, 2026

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github-actions Bot added [Package] Interface /packages/interface [Package] Icons /packages/icons [Package] DataViews /packages/dataviews [Package] Fields /packages/fields labels Jul 7, 2026

simison mentioned this pull request Jul 7, 2026

Github workflows: extend package changelog nudge to bundled packages #78934

Merged

simison added 3 commits July 7, 2026 16:56

Put back "wpScript": false for dashboard packages

4bf6b03

Changelogs

6f6820d

Re-group changelog enforcing for dashboard packages

7236183

simison added the [Type] Build Tooling Issues or PRs related to build tooling label Jul 7, 2026

simison requested a review from Copilot July 9, 2026 09:46

Copilot started reviewing on behalf of simison July 9, 2026 09:46 View session

Copilot AI reviewed Jul 9, 2026

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aduth reviewed Jul 14, 2026

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manzoorwanijk reviewed Jul 16, 2026

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Comment thread packages/dependency-extraction-webpack-plugin/lib/util.js Outdated

Flip the check for wpScript

3a3a472

Co-authored-by: Manzoor Wani <manzoorwani.jk@gmail.com>

simison mentioned this pull request Jul 28, 2026

Renovate: merge WP deps config blocks Automattic/jetpack#50868

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	function resolvePackagePath( packageName, fromDir ) {
	// Use findPackageJSON when available (Node.js 22.14.0+)
	if ( findPackageJSON ) {

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