The Webpack config we finally deleted

A 340-line configuration accumulated between 2017 and 2021, replaced by a Vite config of 24 lines, and the deletion took longer than the replacement.

what the 340 lines were:

  loaders and their options            120
  plugin configuration                  80
  environment-conditional branches      60
  a custom plugin, written in 2019      40
  comments explaining a workaround      40
    for a bug fixed in 2018

what survived into the new config:
  an alias map, and a proxy. 24 lines.

Most of the file described how to do things the newer tool does by default, which is the usual shape of a build configuration that has been maintained rather than revisited. The custom plugin turned out to be replaceable by a three-line transform. The part that took time was proving nothing depended on the six conditional branches, two of which were dead.