Brunch vs Webpack

Overview

Brunch

Stacks106

Followers127

Votes40

GitHub Stars6.8K

Forks431

Webpack

Stacks45.0K

Followers28.1K

Votes752

GitHub Stars65.7K

Forks9.2K

Brunch vs Webpack: What are the differences?

Introduction: Brunch and Webpack are both popular module bundlers for JavaScript applications. However, they have key differences that set them apart.

Configuration: Brunch focuses on convention over configuration, aiming to reduce the need for extensive setup. In contrast, Webpack offers more flexibility with a highly configurable approach, allowing developers to have fine-grained control over the build process.
Plugin Ecosystem: Webpack has a vast plugin ecosystem that allows developers to extend its functionality with ease. Brunch, on the other hand, has a more limited set of plugins available, which may restrict customization options for developers.
Hot Module Replacement (HMR): Webpack comes with built-in support for Hot Module Replacement, which enables developers to see changes in real-time without refreshing the page. Brunch, on the other hand, lacks native HMR support and requires additional setup to achieve the same functionality.
Code Splitting: Webpack offers advanced code splitting capabilities out of the box, allowing developers to split code into smaller chunks for better performance optimization. Brunch, on the other hand, does not provide the same level of built-in support for code splitting, requiring developers to use workarounds or additional plugins.
Performance: Webpack is known for its powerful tree-shaking and module bundling capabilities, making it a preferred choice for complex and large-scale projects where performance optimization is crucial. Brunch, while efficient for smaller projects, may not perform as well in scenarios that demand high-performance optimization.
Community and Support: Webpack has a larger and more active community, with frequent updates and extensive documentation available. Brunch, while still actively maintained, may have fewer resources and community support compared to Webpack.

In Summary, Brunch and Webpack differ in terms of configuration ease, plugin ecosystem, HMR support, code splitting capabilities, performance optimization, and community support.

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CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Advice on Brunch, Webpack

Aleksandr

Contract Software Engineer - Microsoft at Microsoft-365

Dec 23, 2019

Decided

Why migrated?

I could define the next points why we have to migrate:

Decrease build time of our application. (It was the main cause).
Also jspm install takes much more time than npm install.
Many config files for SystemJS and JSPM. For Webpack you can use just one main config file, and you can use some separate config files for specific builds using inheritance and merge them.

301k views301k

Comments

Rob

Tech Lead at Runa

Mar 15, 2021

Decided

The developer experience Webpack gave us was not delighting anyone. It works and is stable and consistent. It is also slow and frustrating. We decided to check out Vite as an alternative when moving to Vue 3 and have been amazed. It is very early in development and there are plenty of rough edges, but it has been a breath of fresh air not waiting for anything to update. It is so fast we have found ourselves using devtools in browser less because changing styles is just as fast in code. We felt confident using the tool because although it is early in its development, the production build is still provided by Rollup which is a mature tool. We also felt optimistic that as good as it is right now, it will only continue to get better, as it is being worked on very actively. So far we are really happy with the choice.

55.8k views55.8k

Comments

Abigail

Dec 10, 2019

Decided

We mostly use rollup to publish package onto NPM. For most all other use cases, we use the Meteor build tool (probably 99% of the time) for publishing packages. If you're using Node on FHIR you probably won't need to know rollup, unless you are somehow working on helping us publish front end user interface components using FHIR. That being said, we have been migrating away from Atmosphere package manager towards NPM. As we continue to migrate away, we may publish other NPM packages using rollup.

224k views224k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Brunch	Webpack
Brunch is an assembler for HTML5 applications. It's agnostic to frameworks, libraries, programming, stylesheet & templating languages and backend technology.	A bundler for javascript and friends. Packs many modules into a few bundled assets. Code Splitting allows to load parts for the application on demand. Through "loaders" modules can be CommonJs, AMD, ES6 modules, CSS, Images, JSON, Coffeescript, LESS, ... and your custom stuff.
compiles your scripts, templates, styleslints them;wraps the scripts and templates in common.js / AMD modules.concatenates scripts and styles;generates source maps for concatenated filescopies assets and static files;shrinks the output by minifying code and optimizing imageswatches your files for changes;notifies you about errors via console and system notifications	Bundles ES Modules, CommonJS, and AMD modules (even combined); Can create a single bundle or multiple chunks that are asynchronously loaded at runtime (to reduce initial loading time); Dependencies are resolved during compilation, reducing the runtime size; Loaders can preprocess files while compiling, e.g. TypeScript to JavaScript, Handlebars strings to compiled functions, images to Base64, etc; Highly modular plugin system to do whatever else your application requires
Statistics
GitHub Stars 6.8K	GitHub Stars 65.7K
GitHub Forks 431	GitHub Forks 9.2K
Stacks 106	Stacks 45.0K
Followers 127	Followers 28.1K
Votes 40	Votes 752
Pros & Cons
Pros 13 Easy and awesome 9 Ultra Fast 9 Light Configuration 4 Built-in dev server with live reload 3 Simple to use	Pros 309 Most powerful bundler 182 Built-in dev server with livereload 142 Can handle all types of assets 87 Easy configuration 22 Laravel-mix Cons 15 Hard to configure 5 No clear direction 2 SystemJS integration is quite lackluster 2 Spaghetti-Code out of the box 2 Fire and Forget mentality of Core-Developers
Integrations
No integrations available	JavaScript

What are some alternatives to Brunch, Webpack?

gulp

Build system automating tasks: minification and copying of all JavaScript files, static images. More capable of watching files to automatically rerun the task when a file changes.

Grunt

The less work you have to do when performing repetitive tasks like minification, compilation, unit testing, linting, etc, the easier your job becomes. After you've configured it, a task runner can do most of that mundane work for you—and your team—with basically zero effort.

Parcel

Parcel is a web application bundler, differentiated by its developer experience. It offers blazing fast performance utilizing multicore processing, and requires zero configuration.

rollup

It is a module bundler for JavaScript which compiles small pieces of code into something larger and more complex, such as a library or application. It uses the new standardized format for code modules included in the ES6 revision of JavaScript, instead of previous idiosyncratic solutions such as CommonJS and AMD.

Backpack

Backpack is minimalistic build system for Node.js. Inspired by Facebook's create-react-app, Zeit's Next.js, and Remy's Nodemon, Backpack lets you create modern Node.js apps and services with zero configuration. Backpack handles all the file-watching, live-reloading, transpiling, and bundling, so you don't have to.

Vite

It is an opinionated web dev build tool that serves your code via native ES Module imports during dev and bundles it with Rollup for production.

Pingy CLI

Gulp and Grunt and other heavyweight build tools are great for complicated build workflows. Sometimes you want something simpler that doesn't take lots of configuration to get up and running. That's Pingy CLI.

Microbundle

Zero-configuration bundler for tiny modules, powered by Rollup.

System.js

It is a Universal Module Loader for JavaScript. If you've used RequireJs or a CommonJs bundler in the past, you have probably created modules.Configurable module loader enabling dynamic ES module workflows in browsers and NodeJS.

Esbuild

It is an extremely fast JavaScript and CSS bundler and minifier. Current build tools for the web are 10-100x slower than they could be. The main goal of this project is to bring about a new era of build tool performance, and create an easy-to-use modern bundler along the way.

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Brunch vs Webpack: What are the differences?

Introduction: Brunch and Webpack are both popular module bundlers for JavaScript applications. However, they have key differences that set them apart.

Configuration: Brunch focuses on convention over configuration, aiming to reduce the need for extensive setup. In contrast, Webpack offers more flexibility with a highly configurable approach, allowing developers to have fine-grained control over the build process.
Plugin Ecosystem: Webpack has a vast plugin ecosystem that allows developers to extend its functionality with ease. Brunch, on the other hand, has a more limited set of plugins available, which may restrict customization options for developers.
Hot Module Replacement (HMR): Webpack comes with built-in support for Hot Module Replacement, which enables developers to see changes in real-time without refreshing the page. Brunch, on the other hand, lacks native HMR support and requires additional setup to achieve the same functionality.
Code Splitting: Webpack offers advanced code splitting capabilities out of the box, allowing developers to split code into smaller chunks for better performance optimization. Brunch, on the other hand, does not provide the same level of built-in support for code splitting, requiring developers to use workarounds or additional plugins.
Performance: Webpack is known for its powerful tree-shaking and module bundling capabilities, making it a preferred choice for complex and large-scale projects where performance optimization is crucial. Brunch, while efficient for smaller projects, may not perform as well in scenarios that demand high-performance optimization.
Community and Support: Webpack has a larger and more active community, with frequent updates and extensive documentation available. Brunch, while still actively maintained, may have fewer resources and community support compared to Webpack.

In Summary, Brunch and Webpack differ in terms of configuration ease, plugin ecosystem, HMR support, code splitting capabilities, performance optimization, and community support.