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

Parcel vs System.js

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

System.js
System.js
Stacks28
Followers10
Votes2
GitHub Stars13.1K
Forks1.1K
Parcel
Parcel
Stacks874
Followers250
Votes18
GitHub Stars44.0K
Forks2.3K

Parcel vs System.js: What are the differences?

Developers describe Parcel as "📦🚀 A fast, zero configuration web application bundler". Parcel is a web application bundler, differentiated by its developer experience. It offers blazing fast performance utilizing multicore processing, and requires zero configuration. On the other hand, System.js is detailed as "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.

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

Some of the features offered by Parcel are:

  • Blazing fast bundle times
  • Bundle all your assets
  • Automatic transforms

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

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

Parcel and System.js are both open source tools. It seems that Parcel with 32.6K GitHub stars and 1.49K forks on GitHub has more adoption than System.js with 9.75K GitHub stars and 852 GitHub forks.

Ratio, tigerbrokers, and Driffle are some of the popular companies that use Parcel, whereas System.js is used by Canopy, Compass Inc., and One Negócios. Parcel has a broader approval, being mentioned in 14 company stacks & 55 developers stacks; compared to System.js, which is listed in 3 company stacks and 4 developer stacks.

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Advice on System.js, Parcel

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
Parcel
Parcel

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.

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

Compatibility with Webpack;Polyfills for Older Browsers;Loader Extensions
Blazing fast bundle times; Bundle all your assets; Automatic transforms; Zero config code splitting; Hot module replacement; Friendly error logging
Statistics
GitHub Stars
13.1K
GitHub Stars
44.0K
GitHub Forks
1.1K
GitHub Forks
2.3K
Stacks
28
Stacks
874
Followers
10
Followers
250
Votes
2
Votes
18
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 1
    Great plugin system
  • 1
    Loads anything trough AMD with the right plugin
Pros
  • 10
    Zero configuration
  • 8
    Built-in dev server with livereload
Cons
  • 3
    Lack of documentation
Integrations
AngularJS
AngularJS
Node.js
Node.js
jQuery
jQuery
JavaScript
JavaScript

What are some alternatives to System.js, Parcel?

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.

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.

Microbundle

Microbundle

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

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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