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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Build Automation
  4. Java Build Tools
  5. Bazel vs Webpacker

Bazel vs Webpacker

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Bazel
Bazel
Stacks314
Followers579
Votes133
Webpacker
Webpacker
Stacks204
Followers48
Votes0
GitHub Stars5.3K
Forks1.5K

Bazel vs Webpacker: What are the differences?

Developers describe Bazel as "Correct, reproducible, fast builds for everyone". Bazel is a build tool that builds code quickly and reliably. It is used to build the majority of Google's software, and thus it has been designed to handle build problems present in Google's development environment. On the other hand, Webpacker is detailed as "Use Webpack to manage app-like JavaScript modules in Rails (by Rails)". Webpacker makes it easy to use the JavaScript preprocessor and bundler Webpack to manage application-like JavaScript in Rails. It coexists with the asset pipeline, as the purpose is only to use Webpack for app-like JavaScript, not images, css, or even JavaScript Sprinkles (that all continues to live in app/assets).

Bazel belongs to "Java Build Tools" category of the tech stack, while Webpacker can be primarily classified under "JS Build Tools / JS Task Runners".

Bazel and Webpacker are both open source tools. Bazel with 12.4K GitHub stars and 2.03K forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Webpacker with 4.29K GitHub stars and 894 GitHub forks.

According to the StackShare community, Bazel has a broader approval, being mentioned in 11 company stacks & 7 developers stacks; compared to Webpacker, which is listed in 7 company stacks and 5 developer stacks.

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Detailed Comparison

Bazel
Bazel
Webpacker
Webpacker

Bazel is a build tool that builds code quickly and reliably. It is used to build the majority of Google's software, and thus it has been designed to handle build problems present in Google's development environment.

Webpacker makes it easy to use the JavaScript preprocessor and bundler Webpack to manage application-like JavaScript in Rails. It coexists with the asset pipeline, as the purpose is only to use Webpack for app-like JavaScript, not images, css, or even JavaScript Sprinkles (that all continues to live in app/assets).

Multi-language support: Bazel supports Java, Objective-C and C++ out of the box, and can be extended to support arbitrary programming languages;High-level build language: Projects are described in the BUILD language, a concise text format that describes a project as sets of small interconnected libraries, binaries and tests. By contrast, with tools like Make you have to describe individual files and compiler invocations;Multi-platform support: The same tool and the same BUILD files can be used to build software for different architectures, and even different platforms. At Google, we use Bazel to build both server applications running on systems in our data centers and client apps running on mobile phones;Reproducibility: In BUILD files, each library, test, and binary must specify its direct dependencies completely. Bazel uses this dependency information to know what must be rebuilt when you make changes to a source file, and which tasks can run in parallel. This means that all builds are incremental and will always produce the same result;Scalable: Bazel can handle large builds
-
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
5.3K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
1.5K
Stacks
314
Stacks
204
Followers
579
Followers
48
Votes
133
Votes
0
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 28
    Fast
  • 20
    Deterministic incremental builds
  • 17
    Correct
  • 16
    Multi-language
  • 14
    Enforces declared inputs/outputs
Cons
  • 3
    No Windows Support
  • 2
    Bad IntelliJ support
  • 1
    Constant breaking changes
  • 1
    Lack of Documentation
  • 1
    Learning Curve
No community feedback yet
Integrations
Java
Java
Objective-C
Objective-C
C++
C++
Rails
Rails
Webpack
Webpack

What are some alternatives to Bazel, Webpacker?

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.

Apache Maven

Apache Maven

Maven allows a project to build using its project object model (POM) and a set of plugins that are shared by all projects using Maven, providing a uniform build system. Once you familiarize yourself with how one Maven project builds you automatically know how all Maven projects build saving you immense amounts of time when trying to navigate many projects.

Gradle

Gradle

Gradle is a build tool with a focus on build automation and support for multi-language development. If you are building, testing, publishing, and deploying software on any platform, Gradle offers a flexible model that can support the entire development lifecycle from compiling and packaging code to publishing web sites.

Brunch

Brunch

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

Pants

Pants

Pants is a build system for Java, Scala and Python. It works particularly well for a source code repository that contains many distinct projects.

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.

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