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gulp

12.9K
8.6K
+ 1
1.7K
Parcel

505
236
+ 1
18
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gulp vs Parcel: What are the differences?

What is gulp? The streaming build system. 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.

What is Parcel? 📦🚀 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.

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

Some of the features offered by gulp are:

  • By preferring code over configuration, gulp keeps simple things simple and makes complex tasks manageable.
  • By harnessing the power of node's streams you get fast builds that don't write intermediary files to disk.
  • gulp's strict plugin guidelines assure plugins stay simple and work the way you expect.

On the other hand, Parcel provides the following key features:

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

gulp and Parcel are both open source tools. It seems that Parcel with 32.1K GitHub stars and 1.46K forks on GitHub has more adoption than gulp with 31.3K GitHub stars and 4.4K GitHub forks.

According to the StackShare community, gulp has a broader approval, being mentioned in 1158 company stacks & 689 developers stacks; compared to Parcel, which is listed in 10 company stacks and 9 developer stacks.

Decisions about gulp and Parcel

Very simple to use and a great way to optimize repetitive tasks, like optimize PNG images, convert to WebP, create sprite images with CSS.

I didn't choose Grunt because of the fact it uses files and Gulp uses memory, making it faster for my use case since I need to work with 3000+ small images. And the fact Gulp has 32k+ stars on GitHub.

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Pros of gulp
Pros of Parcel
  • 454
    Build speed
  • 277
    Readable
  • 244
    Code-over-configuration
  • 210
    Open source
  • 175
    Node streams
  • 107
    Intuitive
  • 84
    Lots of plugins
  • 66
    Works great with browserify
  • 45
    Easy to Learn
  • 17
    Laravel-elixir
  • 4
    build workflow
  • 3
    Great community
  • 3
    Simple & flexible
  • 2
    Stylus intergration
  • 2
    jade intergration
  • 0
    Well documented
  • 0
    Clean Code
  • 10
    Zero configuration
  • 8
    Built-in dev server with livereload

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Cons of gulp
Cons of Parcel
    Be the first to leave a con
    • 3
      Lack of documentation

    Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

    What is 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.

    What is Parcel?

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

    Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

    What companies use gulp?
    What companies use Parcel?
    See which teams inside your own company are using gulp or Parcel.
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    What tools integrate with gulp?
    What tools integrate with Parcel?

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    What are some alternatives to gulp and Parcel?
    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.
    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.
    npm
    npm is the command-line interface to the npm ecosystem. It is battle-tested, surprisingly flexible, and used by hundreds of thousands of JavaScript developers every day.
    Yarn
    Yarn caches every package it downloads so it never needs to again. It also parallelizes operations to maximize resource utilization so install times are faster than ever.
    CodeKit
    Process Less, Sass, Stylus, Jade, Haml, Slim, CoffeeScript, Javascript, and Compass files automatically each time you save. Easily set options for each language.
    See all alternatives