Move from webpack to vite/esbuild #4784
Description
DSpace is on a custom webpack config we created when we first started.
When angular switched to a standardized webpack build in version 6, we couldn't migrate because it didn't support server side rendering at the time, so we kept our custom webpack config. Later we never reassessed if it was possible to switch to the standard angular build.
In version 17 angular has moved to a build system based on vite and esbuild, which is faster, and better able to optimize bundle sizes.
Custom webpack builds are still considered stable and fully supported at this time, but they may not be for much longer. switching to the default build system ahead of time will also make modularizing dspace easier.
There is an automated migration script, but it doesn't work on our custom build. We'll have to follow the steps in the manual migration guide to switch over