Question: What is the status of HTTP/2 support?

[Aghassi]

• Operating System: macOS 10.14.3
• Node Version: 10
• Yarn Version: 1.13.0
• webpack Version: 4.29.4
• webpack-dev-server Version: 3.2.1

• This is a bug
• This is a modification request
• This is a question

I spent about an hour digging around yesterday and couldn't find the answer to this question, so I wanted to post here and get some insight.

I read through #516, which seems to indicate there is HTTP/2 supported, but I couldn't find any docs on how to enable it. All I found in the official docs was the line under this section https://webpack.js.org/configuration/dev-server/#devserverhttps saying that it can run with HTTP/2.

In the code in this repo I found this

webpack-dev-server/lib/Server.js

Lines 633 to 660 in 21687c3

	if (!options.https.spdy) {
	options.https.spdy = {
	protocols: ['h2', 'http/1.1'],
	};
	}
	// `spdy` is effectively unmaintained, and as a consequence of an
	// implementation that extensively relies on Node’s non-public APIs, broken
	// on Node 10 and above. In those cases, only https will be used for now.
	// Once express supports Node's built-in HTTP/2 support, migrating over to
	// that should be the best way to go.
	// The relevant issues are:
	// - https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/21665
	// - https://github.com/webpack/webpack-dev-server/issues/1449
	// - https://github.com/expressjs/express/issues/3388
	if (semver.gte(process.version, '10.0.0')) {
	this.listeningApp = https.createServer(options.https, app);
	} else {
	/* eslint-disable global-require */
	// The relevant issues are:
	// https://github.com/spdy-http2/node-spdy/issues/350
	// https://github.com/webpack/webpack-dev-server/issues/1592
	this.listeningApp = require('spdy').createServer(options.https, app);
	/* eslint-enable global-require */
	}
	} else {
	this.listeningApp = http.createServer(app);
	}

All of which links to issues and other repos which have either been closed or have no work being done on them. And according to this comment #1493 (comment), it is planned for v4, but nothing in the 4.0.0 milestone https://github.com/webpack/webpack-dev-server/milestone/4 seems to support that statement.

Ultimately, I'm confused as to the current situation. Does Webpack-Dev-Server support HTTP/2? If not, will it be supported in the future?

[alexander-akait]

We support http2 using spdy module for backward compatibility with old node version, to enable http2 you should enable https option and spdy option, but i agree it is misleading, and looks we doesn't respect spdy (https://github.com/webpack/webpack-dev-server/blob/master/bin/options.js), thanks for issue. We need:

1. Respect spdy (add alias http2) in CLI
2. Add tests

For future version use http2 module instead node-spdy

[Aghassi]

As an added note, will respecting the spdy option in the CLI also reflect if I am using this programmatically by importing webpack-dev-server?

[alexander-akait]

@Aghassi no, but fix it very easy

[JakobJingleheimer]

@evilebottnawi I'm a bit confused: the options file you linked contains no mention of spdy or http2 (or http/2). I've played around with this all evening, and I cannot get webpack-dev-server to serve over http2. Setting a CLI option does nothing, and the same is true for devServer.https.spdy: true (devServer.spdy causes a validation error).

I see it looks like it's coming in #1721, but it sounds like it was there before?

[alexander-akait]

@jshado1 yep, now it is broken, this PR solve problem, next week release

[alexander-akait]

Fixed #1713, http2 doesn't support on node >= 10 due express doesn't support this right now, we fix it after express was released