In Rail 6 webpack (with a framework integration via the webpacker gem) is the default system for handling JS, CSS still goes through the asset pipeline though. I wouldn't be surprised if Rails 7 drops sprockets entirely.
And I have been wondering why it doesn't push the CSS to Webpack as well. There is no way in the foreseeable future that Rails could do without JS and hence Webpack is mandatory. We might as well push it as default or easily enabled / disabled via options.
It's clunky to build CSS 'packs' and it's unclear how to wire in asset helpers e.g. checksum'd file names for images. It's not insurmountable, but there is no obvious best path forward.
I saw this! It makes sense with the proliferation of front end view layers so I'm pleased that there's less work for me to do to integrate things like Vue and React. I was very late to the party with Rails but I do think it gets a lot of things right.
