Should this gem package the govuk-frontend assets?

[stdstaff]

At the moment the govuk-design-system-rails gem relies on a specific version of the govuk-frontend NPM package, but these two dependencies must be independently included by each consuming application.

This can lead to version and dependency mis-matches, and it's not very intuitive.

A better end-user experience might be for developers to include a single gem (this one) in their Gemfile, which contains the assets required, at the correct upstream version.

Proposal:

• Package the upstream project govuk-frontend as vendored assets
• Ensure Rails projects which consume our gem can still reference the govuk-frontend SASS variables and functions, and JS modules in both the classic asset pipeline, webpack, and modern Rails 7 asset bundlers
• Consider if we need to automate the packaging in some way (so we can stay up-to-date with patchlevel releases)

The upside is the gem becomes easier to use, but there are downsides, for example: The maintainers must commit to keeping up-to-date with new versions of the upstream project, and custom builds of govuk-frontend may then conflict with assets packaged with this gem.

Does the community feel this would be valuable? Comments, PRs, examples welcome!