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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Build Automation
  4. Javascript Build Tools
  5. Microbundle vs System.js

Microbundle vs System.js

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

System.js
System.js
Stacks28
Followers10
Votes2
GitHub Stars13.1K
Forks1.1K
Microbundle
Microbundle
Stacks30
Followers36
Votes2
GitHub Stars8.1K
Forks361

Microbundle vs System.js: What are the differences?

What is Microbundle? Zero-configuration bundler for tiny modules. Zero-configuration bundler for tiny modules, powered by Rollup.

What is System.js? Dynamic ES module loader. 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.

Microbundle and System.js can be categorized as "JS Build Tools / JS Task Runners" tools.

Some of the features offered by Microbundle are:

  • Bundles your library using nothing but a package.json
  • Support for ESnext & async/await
  • Supports multiple entry modules

On the other hand, System.js provides the following key features:

  • Compatibility with Webpack
  • Polyfills for Older Browsers
  • Loader Extensions

Microbundle and System.js are both open source tools. System.js with 9.75K GitHub stars and 852 forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Microbundle with 3.8K GitHub stars and 175 GitHub forks.

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Advice on System.js, Microbundle

Aleksandr
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

Detailed Comparison

System.js
System.js
Microbundle
Microbundle

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.

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

Compatibility with Webpack;Polyfills for Older Browsers;Loader Extensions
Bundles your library using nothing but a package.json; Support for ESnext & async/await; Supports multiple entry modules; Creates multiple output formats for each entry; Build-in Uglify compression & gzipped bundle size tracking
Statistics
GitHub Stars
13.1K
GitHub Stars
8.1K
GitHub Forks
1.1K
GitHub Forks
361
Stacks
28
Stacks
30
Followers
10
Followers
36
Votes
2
Votes
2
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 1
    Great plugin system
  • 1
    Loads anything trough AMD with the right plugin
Pros
  • 1
    Works well with TypeScript
  • 1
    All the best Terser and Rollup settings already set
Integrations
AngularJS
AngularJS
Node.js
Node.js
jQuery
jQuery
JavaScript
JavaScript
npm
npm

What are some alternatives to System.js, Microbundle?

gulp

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.

Webpack

Webpack

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.

Grunt

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.

Brunch

Brunch

Brunch is an assembler for HTML5 applications. It's agnostic to frameworks, libraries, programming, stylesheet & templating languages and backend technology.

Parcel

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

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

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

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

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.

Esbuild

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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