PWA Studio: Webpack hangs before beginning compilation

This article talks about a suggested solution to when a javascript Webpack hangs for a long time before beginning compilation in Magento Progressive Web App Studio (PWA Studio).

AFFECTED PRODUCTS AND VERSIONS

• Magento PWA Studio

Issue

Check what the latest release of the pwa-buildpack is, and the pwa-buildpack version number will be next to the package.json filename listing. If you have an old version of the pwa-buildpack project, the webpack may hang for a long time before beginning compilation.

Steps to reproduce:

Prerequisites: Set up a PWA Studio storefront, such as Venia, with a local Magento instance and run a build or watch command.

Expected result:

• If using the build command, it generates the build artifacts for Venia normally.
• If using the watch command, it starts the Venia storefront normally.

Actual result:

Your build or watch command will seem stalled and will not complete, nor will any errors be shown.

Solutions

Update your project using the following command:

yarn upgrade

Make sure you have a current version of openssl on your system using the following command:

openssl version

The version should be 1.0 or above (or LibreSSL 2, in the case of OSX High Sierra.).

You can install higher versions of OpenSSL with Homebrew on OSX, Chocolatey on Windows, or your Linux distribution’s package manager.

Related reading

• Javascript Webpack: Concepts
• Venia storefront setup
• PWA Buildpack
• buildpack Command Line Interface
• Tools and libraries: buildpack