webops - Release Notes

Next.js and Gatsby projects deployed with WebOps can now benefit from faster builds. WebOps now counts with a caching system, which avoids the expensive work of regenerating unchanged files.

What has changed?​

WebOps can now reuse outputs produced from previous builds. This change reduces the number of requests for external services and, consequently, decreases building time.

Why did we make these changes?​

These improvements aim to reduce WebOps overhead by enhancing the generation, saving, and deployment of compilation artifacts while also decreasing build time. For example, after implementing these changes, it was possible to notice a decrease from 63s to 34s in the building time of the Base Store (Next.js).

What needs to be done?​

Set the following variables to true in the vtex.env file of your FastStore project:

USE_NODE_MODULES_CACHE=true
USE_FRAMEWORK_CACHE=true

Now every deploy preview will have a new Lighthouse Reports box with quick-access links to reports for all pages you have listed in the Lighthouse CI section of the store.config.js file. That way, you can easily track how each pull request impacts the performance, SEO, and accessibility of your store.

What has changed?​

The Lighthouse CI now makes generated Lighthouse Reports available for developers via Google Lighthouse Viewer for each deploy preview and uploads them to AWS S3. WebOps, then, adds comments on new PRs with links to those reports.

Links to these reports are also shared in the logs of the WebOps pipeline for Lighthouse.

Why did we make these changes?​

These changes aim to make it simpler for you to track how each deploy affects your website's performance.

What needs to be done?​

Nothing. This improvement is already available for all WebOps users. Enjoy!

The WebOps pipeline has been updated to use the newest Lighthouse version. In November 2021, Google published Lighthouse version 9.0. Among its main changes, highlights include the upgrade of Lighthouse APIs, the introduction of new user flows, the redesign of Lighthouse reports, and the addition of new accessibility features.

What has changed?​

Before, the WebOps pipeline was using Lighthouse version 8. Now, we are using Lighthouse 9. As a result, newer audit reports may slightly differ from those previously issued. For more information, please refer to this announcement.

Why did we make these changes?​

We understood that getting different results from WebOps and Lighthouse could lead to misunderstandings, so we made this modification to match both results.

What needs to be done?​

These changes are already available for everyone. Thus no further action is required to use WebOps with Lighthouse 9.

Hello WebOps users,

With the increased number of concurrent users of the WebOps platform, we noticed WebOps pipelines were taking longer to execute. Under high loads, workflows that used to take from 2 to 10 minutes started to span between 20 and 50 minutes. This caused CMS publications to take longer than they should, harming the developer experience.

Earlier this week, we began an investigation into it, and we managed to improve the situation drastically. Our pipelines runtime is now back to the 2-10 minutes range, depending on the workload type and size of the store.

We are working hard to deliver improvements to our platform such as this. Expect further improvements during the closed beta as we work on our platform's stability and performance!