I’ve just inherited a HTML/CSS based internal UI library, which the place I work is planning to use to standardise css styles for all of its products across the board, mainly webapps. The library has code that is in a style similar to bootstrap, however there are also seperate css files for each of our clients inside that same git repo.
Now I feel that doing it this way is bad because, firstly I feel client specific styles should be in its own repository, away from the UI library’s base code. Furthermore, when it comes to building the minified css and javascript for production, there is an automated build job, that bumps up the version numbers on completion. Because we have teams working with different clients at once the build jobs/releases will contain code that is ‘Ready to release’ for one client, but the rest will have code the is ‘In Progress’. It also affects the version numbering system where were have dozens of versions, but the main base code has not changed very much.
I feel that this must be fixed, however I know that the time required to invest in this endeavour will have to be alot so I thought if I can weigh up the pros and cons as well as red flags, it would be a good way to make a decision.
Currently I have in mind, is the consider separating any client-specific html/css from the current base code into seperate repository, per client, per product. This repository would then import the base UI library to get the styles related to each component.
Would this be the sort of approach I am looking for for solving my above problem? Are there any possible red flags to this approach? I’m kind of looking for any thoughts and feedback that would aid me in making this decision and justify why it needs to be done. Are these concerns valid?
Thanks