Most blocks built into edx-platform have a pair of webpack entry
points, like this:
* {BlockName}Display # js for student+author+public views
* {BlockName}Editor # js for studio view
Prior to a past build refactoring [1], these entry points were
defined in an auto-genered webpack config file. In order
to simplify the js build process, this config generation
step was removed and the new file webpack.builtinblocks.config.js
was checked directly into edx-platform.
However, during that refactoring, pointless entry
points were introduced for HtmlBlock subclasses
About, CourseInfo, and StaticTab, all of which
just use their superclass's JS.
[1] https://github.com/openedx/edx-platform/issues/32481
The Webpack configuration file for built-in XBlock JS used to be
generated at build time and git-ignored. It lived at
common/static/xmodule/webpack.xmodule.config.js. It was generated
because the JS that it referred to was also generated at build-time, and
the filenames of those JS modules were not static.
Now that its contents have been made entirely static [1], there is no
reason we need to continue generating this Webpack configuration file.
So, we check it into edx-platform under the name
./webpack.builtinblocks.config.js. We choose to put it in the repo's
root directory because the paths contained in the config file are
relative to the repo's root.
This allows us to behead both the xmodule/static_content.py
(`xmodule_assets`) script andthe `process_xmodule_assets` paver task, a
major step in removing the need for Python in the edx-platform asset
build [2]. It also allows us to delete the `HTMLSnippet` class and all
associated attributes, which were exclusively used by
xmodule/static_content.py..
We leave `xmodule_assets` and `process_xmodule_assets` in as stubs for
now in order to avoid breaking external code (like Tutor) which calls
Paver; the entire pavelib/assets.py function will be eventually removed
soon anyway [3]. Further, to avoid extraneous refactoring, we keep one
method of `HTMLSnippet` around on a few of its former subclasses:
`get_html`. This method was originally part of the XModule framework;
now, it is left over on a few classes as a simple internal helper
method.
References:
1. https://github.com/openedx/edx-platform/pull/32480
2. https://github.com/openedx/edx-platform/issues/31800
3. https://github.com/openedx/edx-platform/issues/31895
Part of: https://github.com/openedx/edx-platform/issues/32481
