Overview

Webpack

Stacks41.6K

Followers28.1K

Votes752

GitHub Stars65.7K

Forks9.2K

Babel

Stacks22.5K

Followers11.0K

Votes391

GitHub Stars43.8K

Forks5.8K

Babel vs Webpack: What are the differences?

Babel and Webpack are both essential tools in modern web development, but they have distinct purposes and functionalities. Here are the key differences between Babel and Webpack.

Functionality: Babel is specifically designed for JavaScript transpilation, transforming contemporary ECMAScript code into an older version to guarantee compatibility across different browsers. It is commonly integrated into broader build toolchains, making it essential for projects prioritizing cross-browser support. Webpack, on the other hand, acts as a comprehensive module bundler, excelling in managing and optimizing a diverse range of assets, including JavaScript, CSS, images, and more. It goes beyond Babel's scope by orchestrating an entire build process, making it vital for projects requiring efficient asset bundling and code optimization.
Use Case: Babel is ideally suited for projects where the primary focus is on writing modern JavaScript code while ensuring compatibility with older browsers. It is often integrated into larger build toolchains as part of a workflow tailored for writing and maintaining contemporary JavaScript. Webpack is well-suited for managing the entire build process of web applications. It is indispensable for projects requiring meticulous asset management, code splitting, and optimization, offering a comprehensive solution beyond JavaScript bundling.
Configuration: Babel's configuration is typically simpler, emphasizing the specification of input JavaScript code and desired output versions. It plays a specific role in a broader toolchain, and its configuration often involves minimal settings for JavaScript transpilation. Webpack's configuration can be more intricate, involving the definition of loaders, plugins, and settings for multiple asset types. It orchestrates the entire application build process, requiring a more detailed configuration to handle diverse assets and optimizations.
Plugin and Loader Ecosystem: Babel boasts its ecosystem of plugins and presets, primarily focusing on JavaScript transformations. Developers can extend Babel's capabilities using these plugins, enhancing its functionality for specific use cases. Webpack showcases a vast ecosystem of loaders and plugins that cover a wide range of asset types and build optimizations. It provides extensive customization options for different facets of the build process, offering versatility beyond JavaScript bundling.
Output: The primary output of Babel is transpiled JavaScript code, ready to be included in the final application bundle. It typically operates as part of a larger build process managed by tools like Webpack. Webpack produces a bundled JavaScript file (or files) as its primary output, alongside other optimized assets like CSS, images, and fonts. This creates a deployable package for the web server, showcasing its role as a holistic module bundler.
Integration: Babel is typically integrated into a larger build process using tools like Webpack, Rollup, or Parcel to bundle and optimize the entire application. Its role is crucial for handling JavaScript transpilation within a broader workflow. Webpack can be used as a standalone build tool or integrated with other tools like Babel to create a comprehensive build and optimization workflow for web applications. Its flexibility allows seamless integration with various tools, showcasing interoperability within diverse development setups.

In summary, Babel focuses on transpiling JavaScript and supporting other languages, while Webpack excels in module bundling, asset optimization, and providing a powerful development server. Both tools have their own specific roles in the web development workflow, and they can be used together to optimize and streamline the development process.

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Advice on Webpack, Babel

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.

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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.

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Comments

Detailed Comparison

Webpack	Babel
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.	Babel will turn your ES6+ code into ES5 friendly code, so you can start using it right now without waiting for browser support.
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	Array comprehensions; Arrow functions; Async functions; Async generator functions; Classes; Class properties; Computed property names; Constants; Decorators; Default parameters; Destructuring; Exponentiation operator; For-of; Generators; Generator comprehensions; Let scoping; Modules; Module export extensions; Object rest/spread; Property method assignment; Property name shorthand; Rest parameters; React; Spread; Tail call optimisation; Template literals; Type annotations; Unicode regex; JSX; React; Flow; Node.js; Meteor; Rails; Broccoli; Browserify; Require.js; Brunch; Duo; Gobble; Grunt; Gulp; Make; Webpack; Connect; Jade; Jest; Karma; Mocha; Nodemon
Statistics
GitHub Stars 65.7K	GitHub Stars 43.8K
GitHub Forks 9.2K	GitHub Forks 5.8K
Stacks 41.6K	Stacks 22.5K
Followers 28.1K	Followers 11.0K
Votes 752	Votes 391
Pros & Cons
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 Fire and Forget mentality of Core-Developers 2 Loader architecture is quite a mess (unreliable/buggy)	Pros 165 Modern Javascript works with all browsers 77 Open source 60 Integration with lots of tools 56 Easy setup 26 Very active on github
Integrations
JavaScript	Grunt Broccoli Browserify Brunch Duo gulp RequireJS

What are some alternatives to Webpack, Babel?

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.

Brunch

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

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.

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.