Change the optimization minify option to allow removing whitespaces but keep comments

[CarlosTorrecillas]

Which @angular/* package(s) are relevant/related to the feature request?

No response

Description

At the moment, as far as I know and as per the docs, the minify option accepts only a boolean and does everything to reduce the size of the final CSS (removing excess of whitespaces and comments). This can become a problem if you run a postbuild task that removes the unused CSS using PurgeCSS for example. Since purge looks for comments such as /* purgecss start ignore */ it won't find them and therefore it will remove the css block

Proposed solution

Extend the minify option to accept either a boolean (right now) or two properties: whitespaces and comments so we are able to tweak accordingly

Alternatives considered

Run another postbuild task that will remove the whitespaces "manually" after the CSS optimization

[alan-agius4]

In this case, you need to use CSS special comments, /*! comment here */ which CSS minifiers will not remove.

See: https://github.com/FullHuman/purgecss/blob/main/docs/safelisting.md#gotchas

[CarlosTorrecillas]

Thank you very much. I think it would be good to get it in the minify reference section just to be aware that you can have comments using the syntax you described

[CarlosTorrecillas]

@alan-agius4 The trouble here is that PurgeCSS is not able to pick the comment like that (/*! comment here */) as it seems it needs exaclty /* purgecss start ignore */.

I guess under this circumstances perhaps you can reconsider the feature request? I think that would be useful for people who suddenly not see the expected behaviour, users that rely on comments being the exact same way as described on third party libraries docs for example

[alan-agius4]

Based on their docs (linked above) , purgeCSS does support the mentioned comment format.

[CarlosTorrecillas]

Yeah, I just saw. I'm getting in touch because it seems there is a bug

[CarlosTorrecillas]

Hi again @alan-agius4 , I have been doing some tests disabling the Purge step to see what the initial output would be. It seems that when you have multiple files (SCSS files) that are combined into the style bundle some of the comments get lost - this is on my web app, newly migrated to Angular 17 today.

On a brand new application (doing ng new) the comments simply don't appear. I guess I can create an issue with that? before doing it, is it something you could quickly verify on your side?

[alan-agius4]

That is expected with esbuild and is per design. Esbuild will remove any comments in JS and CSS unless they are "special".

See evanw/esbuild#221 for more context.

[CarlosTorrecillas]

OK - Then the comments disappearing on a brand new Angular 17 is expected. For new applications or for applications that we want to migrate, is there any example for configuring comments so that we can still use tools that rely on comments such as PurgeCSS?

[alan-agius4]

Esbuild by design does not allow standard comments to be retained, this includes all application both new and existing will have standard comments dropped. This also includes the Webpack build pipeline which under the hood esbuild is used as an JS and CSS minifier and optimizer.

Typically tools that rely on comments support In this case the special /*! comment */, which esbuild and other minifiers will not delete.

[CarlosTorrecillas]

Just to clarify, esbuild WILL delete even "special" comments like /*! comment */. Is that what you are saying? So in theory there is no way to get around it at the moment

[alan-agius4]

Esbuild like other minifiers will not delete special comments.