GOV.UK Publishing Components uses GOV.UK Frontend, the frontend library built and maintained by the GOV.UK Design System team, to ensure consistency in styles and components with other services across the government.
This gem consumes GOV.UK Frontend via Yarn. Dependabot will let us know when a new version of govuk-frontend is available. There are a few checks to be done before merging in a 'Bump govuk-frontend' pull request.
GOV.UK Frontend has well-documented release notes that, depending on the release type, might contain the following sections:
- Breaking changes (major release)
- New features (minor release)
- Fixes (patch release)
Check if and how the breaking changes affect this gem and GOV.UK applications dependent on this gem. For each breaking change follow the migration steps in the release notes and push the changes in a separate commit on the same Dependabot branch. Make sure to test GOV.UK applications with this branch. On major releases is always a good idea to involve someone from the GOV.UK Design System team in the review process as they have a thorough understanding of the changes.
Check if and how the new feature changes affect this repository. If a new feature is added to a component, check the markup of the component associated with the feature mirrors the one in govuk-frontend. We usually benefit from the JavaScript and SCSS updates without requiring any changes, however make sure these are being imported in the component as expected. If a feature was pushed upstream from this gem to the GOV.UK Design System make sure to update the code to use the feature from upstream and remove the unused code in this gem. We decided that we will not bring features into govuk_publishing_components unless there is a user need for this (for example it improves the accessibility of a component) or it makes the code more robust (for example it provides better browser support).
Check if the fixes require markup changes and, if so, adjust it to mirror the one in govuk-frontend. If a fix is in the JavaScript and/or SCSS we will benefit from this without requiring further changes.
Add a final commit with a CHANGELOG entry mirroring the pull request name (for example "Bump govuk-frontend from 3.8.1 to 3.9.1"). This helps us keep track of such updates and debug potential issues.
If the pull request required any code changes ask a colleague for a review, otherwise you can approve it and merge it yourself.
Note that the govuk-frontend release type does not dictate the govuk_publishing_components release type the latter being based on the required changes imposed by the former.
See an example pull request for upgrading to a new minor version of govuk-frontend.
See an example pull request for upgrading to a new major version of govuk-frontend.