Hook ordering

[brillout]

Follow up of:

• vitejs/vite - #9442 - comment by @brillout
• rollup/rollup - #4600 - comment by @ElMassimo

On my side I'd suggest the following.

We extend order to be able to be a number BUT we add a BIG warning to the docs:

⚠️ DO NOT use a number for order without having checked https://github.com/rollup/hook-ordering/README.md. Your plugin WILL BREAK if you do not.

In that readme:

• We define stages.
  • I think we should define A LOT of stages.
    • The idea here is that we define one stage per plugin at first. For example we define the stage pwa for vite-plugin-pwa, then deploy for vite-plugin-vercel, sitemap for all the sitemap plugins, etc.
    • As the number of stages increases too much, we start merging stages together.
    • This way, things evolve organically without us having to think too much about defining stages.
• We explain that using a magic number is a last-resort-escape-hatch that, when used, should be considered temporary until a new stage is created. The user absolutely has to create a new issue on the rollup/hook-ordering repository.
  • When a plugin author opens a new issue, we create a new stage for his plugin.
  • We can even do some unorthodox things like a flag yesIHaveCreatedAnIssueOnTheHookOrderingRepository that the user needs to set to true to unlock the capability to use a number.

We could host that readme at https://github.com/vitejs but intuitively (I didn't think this through, maybe I'm wrong) I'd say it would be better if it lives at https://github.com/rollup while giving the Vite team write access.

(I'm super busy this week as I've to deliver a couple of features I promised, so I may be delayed/minimal in my replies.)

[patak-dev]

I don't think order being a number is a good idea for the reasons we already discussed in the linked thread. See my opinion starting from this comment:

• https://github.com/vitejs/vite/discussions/9442#discussioncomment-3308072

What I think is worth exploring, and I opposed before, is something along the lines of @ElMassimo's proposal in this comment rollup/rollup#4600 (comment), to let plugins get before or after known plugins from their respective ecosystem (like the vuetify or iles plugins and @vitejs/plugin-vue). Probably a good idea to let this discussion be about order as number and start a new one about order relative to other plugins.

[brillout]

I do agree with your point (and it actually led me to change my opinion since the last time we discussed this 👍).

The idea of my new proposal above is to consider magic numbers only as interim solution for plugin authors until the central authority (being that readme/repository mentioned in the proposal) a new stage.

to let plugins get before or after known plugins from their respective ecosystem

I originally also thought about this. But I came to the conclusion that it's probably not scalable. From my comment here:

As for runAfter: string[] I'm just realizing it doesn't scale: if there are 10 PWA plugins and 10 deploy plugins then it becomes messy adding a bunch of plugins to runAfter and maintaing that list. I don't think it's an option, really.

[patak-dev]

PWA and Deploy plugins ordering are a non-issue now that we will have sequential AFAICS. Order is enough here as we discussed in that thread. What is still an issue if I understood @ElMassimo correctly are plugins that need to extend the functionality of a known plugin (Vuetify with Vue, Iles with Vue, etc) and may need to get before Vue and after Vue but they shouldn't use pre or post as that will push them too far before other plugins that need to come before for example.

[brillout]

plugins that need to extend the functionality of a known plugin

Ok, yes, in that case that would work out.

[ElMassimo]

Like @patak-dev mentioned, my proposal is aimed at solving a different problem. Created a separate discussion:

• https://github.com/vitejs/vite/discussions/9633