Default to array prepend?

In Webpack plugin order is significant. This means the first matched plugin wins. Currently webpack-merge concatenates arrays in the order it finds them. So if you have merge(common, prod), it will pick up plugins from common first and prod after that.

This can be problematic if you are trying to apply a plugin like DedupePlugin at prod as it would have to be before other plugins.

Maybe we should reverse this order? So that instead of appending, we would prepend arrays. That way the last merged array would win and it would become easier to control ordering like this.

Any thoughts? Can you see any problems with this change? It would be a major version bump in any case.

[insin]

Given that webpack-merge is specifically targetted at webpack configs, could you change the merge strategy based on the property path being merged to do the thing that’s most likely to be right by default for a webpack config?

So for a top-level plugins prop, that could be prepending.

Would it also be possible to allow users to override that in case it isn’t what they want?

let mySpecialMerge = merge.strategy({plugins: 'append'})

[bebraw]

@tleunen I added merge.smartStrategy({ entry: 'module.loaders' }) in 0.18.0. That should give you more control over individual fields. merge.strategy supports nested fields now as well.