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JavaScript Configuring Webpack

Ryan Barone
Ryan Barone
7,079 Points
Posted by Ryan Barone
Ryan Barone
7,079 Points

Why do you do "./" before the referencing the app.js file?

At 1:52 in "Setting Up Webpack", "Configuring Webpack" video, you put the following:

module.exports = { entry: './app.js', ... }

Why not just do 'app.js' like <script src="app.js"></script>?

1 Answer

Chris Shaw
Chris Shaw
26,662 Points
Chris Shaw
Chris Shaw
26,662 Points

Hi Ryan Barone,

We do this as Webpack runs in the context of Node, typically the default context when working inside a project folder will be the node_modules folder which isn't great since our code doesn't live there. To overcome this, the majority of developers will prefix paths with ./ which defines the path context to the root of the project folder where your webpack.config.js file lives.

You will see this a lot more as you progress further into ES6 modules which also require the use of ./ to define the root of the project.

Hope that helps.