Handling config files with webpack

Question

I have an electron app that I'm building with webpack 2. I have a config file that I'm including like a normal webpack resource:

config.js:

export default {
    config1: 1,
    config2: 2
}

main.js:

import config from '../some/path/config';
console.log(config.config1);

The config file code ends up in my bundle.js file as you would expect. The problem is that the point of config files is that you can change them after deployment. This set up requires me to re-webpackify everything if I want config file changes to take effect.

Update 1:

I thought file-loader might be the answer but the problem is that file loader replaces require statement with a path to a file, not the file content itself.

Update 2:

At the suggestion of @sancelot, I tried making it a separate entry point and output in my webpack config file.

entry: {
    main: ['babel-polyfill', path.join(__dirname, '../app/main.js')],
    config: [path.join(__dirname, '../app/config.js')]
},

output: {
    path: `${__dirname}/../build/`,
    publicPath: `${__dirname}/../build/`,
    filename: '../build/[name].bundle.js'
}

which did create a separate config.bundle.js file but main.bundle.js still contained its own copy of the config file internally and basically ignored config.bundle.js. For the sake of completeness, I here is the entire webpack config file:

import webpack from 'webpack';
import path from 'path';


export default {
    devtool: 'source-map',

    target: 'electron-main',

    entry: {
        main: ['babel-polyfill', path.join(__dirname, '../app/main.js')],
        config: [path.join(__dirname, '../app/config.js')]
    },

    output: {
        path: `${__dirname}/../build/`,
        publicPath: `${__dirname}/../build/`,
        filename: '../build/[name].bundle.js'
    },

    module: {
        rules: [
            {
                test: /\.(js|jsx)$/,
                exclude: /node_modules/,
                use: {
                    loader: 'babel-loader',
                    options: {
                        cacheDirectory: true
                    }
                }
            },
            {
                test: /index.html/,
                use: {
                    loader: 'file-loader',
                    options: {
                        name: 'index.html'
                    }
                }
            }
        ]
    },

    plugins: [
        new webpack.DefinePlugin({
            'process.env.NODE_ENV': JSON.stringify(process.env.NODE_ENV || 'production'),
            'process.env.devMode': process.env.NODE_ENV === 'development',
            'process.env.prodMode': process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production',
            'process.env.DEBUG_PROD': JSON.stringify(process.env.DEBUG_PROD || 'false')
        })
    ],

    node: {
        __dirname: false,
        __filename: false
    },
}

Answer 1

For this case, I'd suggest dotenv

For client-side applications (that run in browsers), I'd suggest envify.

Both suggestions have easy to follow setup guides.

Answer 2

you have to add an entry in your webpack config

{
  entry: {
    app: './src/app.js',
    config: './src/config.js'
  },
  output: {
    filename: '[name].js',
    path: __dirname + '/dist'
  }
 }

https://webpack.js.org/concepts/output/