How do I generate sourcemaps when using babel and webpack?

Question

In order to use source map, you should change devtool option value from true to the value which available in this list, for instance source-map

devtool: 'source-map'

devtool: 'source-map' - A SourceMap is emitted.

Maybe someone else has this problem at one point. If you use the UglifyJsPlugin in webpack 2 you need to explicitly specify the sourceMap flag. For example:

new webpack.optimize.UglifyJsPlugin({ sourceMap: true })

Minimal webpack config for jsx with sourcemaps:

var path = require('path');
var webpack = require('webpack');

module.exports = {
  entry: `./src/index.jsx` ,
  output: {
    path:  path.resolve(__dirname,"build"),
    filename: "bundle.js"
  },
  devtool: 'eval-source-map',
  module: {
    loaders: [
      {
        test: /.jsx?$/,
        loader: 'babel-loader',
        exclude: /node_modules/,
        query: {
          presets: ['es2015', 'react']
        }
      }
    ]
  },
};

Running it:

Jozsefs-MBP:react-webpack-babel joco$ webpack -d
Hash: c75d5fb365018ed3786b
Version: webpack 1.13.2
Time: 3826ms
        Asset     Size  Chunks             Chunk Names
    bundle.js   1.5 MB       0  [emitted]  main
bundle.js.map  1.72 MB       0  [emitted]  main
    + 221 hidden modules
Jozsefs-MBP:react-webpack-babel joco$

If optimizing for dev + production, you could try something like this in your config:

const dev = process.env.NODE_ENV !== 'production'

// in config

{
  devtool: dev ? 'eval-cheap-module-source-map' : 'source-map',
}

From the docs:

• devtool: "eval-cheap-module-source-map" offers SourceMaps that only maps lines (no column mappings) and are much faster
• devtool: "source-map" cannot cache SourceMaps for modules and need to regenerate complete SourceMap for the chunk. It’s something for production.

I am using webpack 2.1.0-beta.19

On Webpack 2 I tried all 12 devtool options. The following options link to the original file in the console and preserve line numbers. See the note below re: lines only.

https://webpack.js.org/configuration/devtool

devtool best dev options

                                build   rebuild      quality                       look
eval-source-map                 slow    pretty fast  original source               worst
inline-source-map               slow    slow         original source               medium
cheap-module-eval-source-map    medium  fast         original source (lines only)  worst
inline-cheap-module-source-map  medium  pretty slow  original source (lines only)  best

lines only

Source Maps are simplified to a single mapping per line. This usually means a single mapping per statement (assuming you author is this way). This prevents you from debugging execution on statement level and from settings breakpoints on columns of a line. Combining with minimizing is not possible as minimizers usually only emit a single line.

REVISITING THIS

On a large project I find ... eval-source-map rebuild time is ~3.5s ... inline-source-map rebuild time is ~7s

Even same issue I faced, in browser it was showing compiled code. I have made below changes in webpack config file and it is working fine now.

 devtool: '#inline-source-map',
 debug: true,

and in loaders I kept babel-loader as first option

loaders: [
  {
    loader: "babel-loader",
    include: [path.resolve(__dirname, "src")]
  },
  { test: /\.js$/, exclude: [/app\/lib/, /node_modules/], loader: 'ng-annotate!babel' },
  { test: /\.html$/, loader: 'raw' },
  {
    test: /\.(jpe?g|png|gif|svg)$/i,
    loaders: [
      'file?hash=sha512&digest=hex&name=[hash].[ext]',
      'image-webpack?bypassOnDebug&optimizationLevel=7&interlaced=false'
    ]
  },
  {test: /\.less$/, loader: "style!css!less"},
  { test: /\.styl$/, loader: 'style!css!stylus' },
  { test: /\.css$/, loader: 'style!css' }
]