April 3, 2024
We have recently released the v0.1 version of Module Federation Enhanced (You can simply think of it as the early version of Module Federation 2.0.)!
Module Federation Enhanced differs from the Module Federation built into Webpack5 by providing not only the core features of module export, loading, and dependency sharing but also additional dynamic type hinting, Manifest, Federation Runtime, and Runtime Plugin. These features make Module Federation more suitable for use as a micro-frontend architecture in large-scale Web applications.
Module Federation comes with the following features:
New Documentation: Module Federation has launched a brand-new documentation, which can help you better understand and utilize Module Federation.
Dynamic Type Hinting: Module Federation uses dynamic runtime, which previously did not support TypeScript type hinting. This significantly impacted the stability and maintainability of projects. Therefore, Module Federation now supports out-of-the-box type exports and dynamic type loading capabilities, as well as hot type updating, providing an experience akin to loading local NPM modules.
Manifest: In the past, Module Federation primarily used remoteEntry.js as the entry point for Module Federation modules. Remote modules could not store more original information, such as type files, exposes, remotes, etc. We now support setting remote to mf-manifest.json, which enables more advanced capabilities: type hinting, resource preloading, visualized dependency relationships, shared dependency analysis, integration with deployment platforms, and service discovery.
Federation Runtime: Federation Runtime is an independent software development kit (SDK) that addresses compatibility issues with Module Federation across different build tools. In the early stages, the implementation of Module Federation was tightly coupled with Webpack 5, making it difficult for other build tools to support and leading to poor maintainability. By treating Federation Runtime as a separate component, the new versions of Webpack and Rspack, as well as other build tools, can more easily implement and maintain Module Federation features, enhancing the flexibility and efficiency of module loading and dependency sharing.
Rspack: The Module Federation in Rspack is based on Federation Runtime, thus enjoying all the additional capabilities of Module Federation Enhance. Moreover, due to the partitioned architecture concept of Module Federation, you can progressively migrate your large projects to Rspack through Module Federation.
Module Federation Enhanced is still in rapid iteration and plans to introduce more powerful new features.
For example, we are developing the Module Federation Chrome Devtool, a user-friendly Module Federation debugging and proxy tool that can directly proxy online project Module Federation modules to local and enable real-time hot updates. It provides a visual dependency graph that allows you to see the Module Federation dependency relationships and Shared settings.
At the same time, we will offer more framework-level capabilities, such as: Modern.js SSR, React Server Component, Router, Web Component, cross-frame.
The release of Module Federation Enhanced version 0.1 would not have been possible without the feedback and suggestions from the Module Federation community and the efforts of contributors to the Universe repository.