Large-scale Code Migration at Netlify

Customer Overview

Netlify, the pioneer of the composable web, supports millions of developers and thousands of enterprise customers by handling infrastructure for modern web applications. With a team of over 100 engineers, Netlify constantly aims to keep their tech stack fresh, ensuring their developers can ship new features quickly despite their growing codebase size.

The Challenge

Netlify had previously attempted to migrate both React and React Router to the latest versions to improve the developer experience. However, the React upgrade was never prioritized due to other business initiatives, and the React Router migration was such a significant burden that it was set aside because of the complexity and risk associated with the task. Following the acquisition of Stackbit, merging the two codebases became essential to streamline maintenance and accelerate new feature development. To achieve this, Netlify had to ensure their codebase was as up-to-date as Stackbit’s, a newer product, which made the React Router and React upgrades unavoidable.

Our Solution

After careful evaluation of many solutions in the space, Netlify partnered with Codemod for its proven technology in large-scale codebase migrations, a step up from those used at Meta. As champions of open-source, Netlify picked Codemod's open platform, which aligned with their strategic goals.

When Codemod handled the latest MSW* major version migration at Netlify, they open-sourced the automation for the entire community (MSW has 3.5M npm weekly downloads). Codemod’s commitment to open-source aligns with our values, and we love partnering with a platform that impacts both Netlify and the wider developer community.

Kaelig Deloumeau-PrigentPrincipal Engineer at Netlify

Codemod, the official maintainer of Meta’s jscodeshift and provider of codemods for top frameworks like React, Nuxt.js, pnpm, offered a seamless "successful-migration-as-a-service" solution. This ensured smooth migrations, clear ROI, and exceptional service. With shared values and technical expertise, Codemod was the perfect fit for modernizing Netlify’s codebase.

Codemod Agents drive efficient migrations through four phases: planning with estimations and dependencies, prepping with cleanup and refactors, incremental development with feature flags, and monitoring with UAT and rollback options.

The Partnership and Value Added

The partnership between Netlify and Codemod began with a discovery call to align on Netlify's tech stack and high-level business goals. Codemod’s team mapped out all necessary migrations, prioritized them, and created a comprehensive migration plan. This included outlining the benefits (faster development velocity), conducting a migration readiness analysis (cost and impact), developing an incremental migration strategy, defining roles and responsibilities, ensuring rollback strategies and quality assurance, and offering post-migration support.

Keeping the code up-to-date, secure, and performant is essential for Netlify engineers' satisfaction and development speed. Codemod helps us plan large code changes, safely automates the execution, and lets us track migrations that were previously too difficult to even start working on.

Kaelig Deloumeau-PrigentPrincipal Engineer at Netlify

Leveraging Netlify's instant rollback capabilities, Codemod executed the migration efficiently and with minimal risk. By automating half of the migration process using community-driven codemods, Codemod completed the migration twice as fast and at a significantly lower cost. Netlify’s team was relieved of the need to recruit and manage additional talent, avoiding the overhead of procurement and compensation. Furthermore, delegating these migrations to Codemod freed up Netlify's top engineers to focus on building new features, boosting both productivity and developer satisfaction.

Codemod's Value Proposition: A Comparison Against Alternatives

Migrate with peace of mind.

Fully delegate your migrations to Codemod SOC2-compliant platform and agents and empower your developers to do their best work.

For Codemod to perform at its best, it needs access to the Netlify build logs, GitHub, and the ability to run the app. At our request, Codemod quickly became SOC2 compliant, giving us the necessary peace of mind to expand our partnership.

Kaelig Deloumeau-PrigentPrincipal Engineer at Netlify

Contact us for a personalized demo to see how Codemod can modernize your tech stack, reduce migration time, and help your team ship features faster, on a secure and performant codebase.