Webpack

Webpack now emits ES modules by default on ESM-capable targets when futureDefaults is enabled, and also adds output.copy for copying files into the output directory. The experiments.outputModule option has been removed, so any config using it must switch to setting output.module directly to keep emitting ESM.

Matters for: Teams building JavaScript libraries with webpack's module and modern-module library output types, or using experiments.outputModule in their existing config.

Webpack 5.110 can now report detailed performance hints (duplicate modules, circular dependencies, unused rules/defines/externals, cache effectiveness, and more) in a stable order, and it can safely minify and beautify CSS and HTML assets automatically when optimization.minimize is enabled, with every transformation exposed as a toggleable option. It also adds a built-in externalsPresets.nodeModules preset that externalizes installed packages, replacing the need for the separate webpack-node-externals plugin, and performs deeper CommonJS tree shaking of object literals, destructured exports, and unused requires.

Matters for: Teams building Node.js libraries or server bundles who currently rely on webpack-node-externals, and teams tuning large production webpack builds for bundle size and cache efficiency.