Tooling refresh

[Michael1142]

Summary

Modernises the Express.js service template and brings its runtime, development tooling, frontend build and test stack up to date.

The changes remove obsolete dependencies and configuration, improve the local development experience, and simplify how applications created from the template are built and run.

Changes

Runtime and container

• Upgrade the template to Node.js 24.
• Run Node directly as PID 1 in the production container so Kubernetes termination signals are handled correctly.
• Retain the production HTTP server and close it gracefully on SIGTERM.
• Update the Docker Compose configuration.
• Include the Yarn Plug'n'Play ESM loader in the Docker build context.

TypeScript and development workflow

• Upgrade to TypeScript 6.
• Adopt the modern Node module configuration and target ES2023.
• Replace Nodemon and ts-node with tsx watch.
• Add Yarn editor SDKs and workspace configuration so imports resolve correctly in VS Code.
• Remove obsolete TypeScript and development dependencies.

Logging

• Replace @hmcts/nodejs-logging with an application-owned Winston 3 logger.
• Use structured JSON logging.
• Remove the local compatibility declaration previously required by the HMCTS logging package.

Testing and linting

• Upgrade Jest, ts-jest, Playwright and related test tooling.
• Include route tests in the standard test command.
• Replace the remaining Chai assertions with Jest assertions.
• Migrate ESLint to flat configuration and upgrade to ESLint 10.
• Consolidate the TypeScript ESLint configuration.
• Replace eslint-plugin-import ordering rules with simple import sorting.
• Upgrade Prettier, lint-staged and Husky to their current configuration formats.

Frontend build

• Upgrade GOV.UK Frontend to 6.4.
• Upgrade Webpack, Sass and the associated loaders and plugins.
• Replace the deprecated Sass import with the GOV.UK Frontend module entrypoint.
• Simplify the Webpack configuration and runtime asset copying.
• Remove unused frontend dependencies and obsolete build configuration.

Dependency maintenance

• Upgrade supported runtime and development dependencies.
• Remove obsolete dependency resolutions for form-data and js-yaml.
• Remove the obsolete copy-webpack-plugin restriction from Renovate.
• Remove the redundant @types/config package now that config provides its own types.
• Retain explicit Plug'n'Play peer dependencies where required by the existing tooling.

Template maintenance

• Update the repository initialisation script.
• Update GitHub Actions for the revised Node.js and Yarn configuration.

Why

The template had accumulated outdated dependencies, legacy configuration and compatibility workarounds. Updating these incrementally had become increasingly difficult because several parts of the toolchain were coupled to older versions of Node.js, TypeScript, Webpack and ESLint.

This change establishes a more current baseline for services created from the template and reduces the amount of migration work required by adopting teams.

Testing

• yarn install
• yarn typecheck
• yarn lint
• yarn test
• yarn build
• yarn start:dev
• Production container builds successfully
• Production container starts and responds to health checks
• Container shuts down cleanly on SIGTERM
• Template initialisation script tested against a newly cloned repository

Review notes

This is a broad toolchain update, but the commits have been kept separate by concern to make review easier.

The areas most worth reviewing closely are:

• the Node.js 24 and TypeScript 6 configuration;
• the replacement of @hmcts/nodejs-logging;
• the production container entrypoint and graceful shutdown behaviour;
• the GOV.UK Frontend and Webpack asset changes; and
• the updated template initialisation script.

Breaking changes

Services generated from the updated template will use newer versions of Node.js, TypeScript, ESLint, GOV.UK Frontend and associated tooling.

This PR updates the template itself and does not automatically migrate existing services.

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