Drop double minify via Uglifier in Middleman build

[ikuwow]

Why

The webpack bump PR #920 (5.107.2 → 5.108.3) started failing the CircleCI build job with Unexpected token: punc (.) on build/bundle-critical-*.js. The stack trace points at uglifier-4.2.1/lib/uglifier.rb:166 #compile, invoked from activate :minify_javascript, compressor: -> { Uglifier.new(harmony: true) } in config.rb.

Root cause is a double minify path, not the bump itself:

• Webpack production mode already minifies the emitted bundles with Terser.
• Middleman then re-minifies the same output through the uglifier gem, whose bundled UglifyJS only understands ES5-ish syntax.
• Webpack 5.108.x now ships modern JS (e.g. optional chaining) in its runtime code, which UglifyJS cannot parse.

The uglifier gem has also gone quiet — 4.2.1 shipped on 2024-09-22 after a ~5-year gap from 4.2.0 (2019-09-25), so keeping the pass alive as a Ruby-side minifier is not a good long-term bet either.

What

Remove the Middleman-side JS minify pass. The webpack production build (webpack --config webpack.prod.js, mode: 'production') keeps handling minification for the bundles that actually ship.

The uglifier gem is only a transitive dependency in Gemfile.lock, so no Gemfile change is needed. It will drop out on the next bundle update naturally.

Verification

• Local npm run build on this branch produces minified .tmp/dist/bundle-critical.js and .tmp/dist/bundle-main.js (IIFE, single-char idents, no whitespace) and both pass node --check.
• Compared to the currently deployed live bundles (double-minify): the Terser-only output is smaller uncompressed and gzip-neutral, so removing the Uglifier pass does not regress ship size.

Size comparison (bytes):

bundle	live (Terser+Uglifier)	this branch (Terser only)	delta	delta (gzip)
bundle-critical.js	141,451	133,753	−7,698	+255
bundle-main.js	4,425	4,416	−9	−25

Follow-up

• Rebase / re-run dependabot PR Bump webpack from 5.107.2 to 5.108.3 #920 (webpack 5.108.3) — expected to pass once this lands