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gulp vs rollup: What are the differences?
Developers describe gulp as "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. On the other hand, rollup is detailed as "The next-generation JavaScript module bundler". 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.
gulp and rollup can be categorized as "JS Build Tools / JS Task Runners" tools.
gulp is an open source tool with 31.3K GitHub stars and 4.41K GitHub forks. Here's a link to gulp's open source repository on GitHub.
Typeform, PedidosYa, and Myntra are some of the popular companies that use gulp, whereas rollup is used by Repro, Yummypets, and Elementum. gulp has a broader approval, being mentioned in 1163 company stacks & 706 developers stacks; compared to rollup, which is listed in 12 company stacks and 4 developer stacks.
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.
Pros of gulp
- Build speed451
- Readable277
- Code-over-configuration244
- Open source210
- Node streams175
- Intuitive107
- Lots of plugins83
- Works great with browserify66
- Easy to Learn45
- Laravel-elixir17
- build workflow4
- Great community3
- Simple & flexible3
- Clean Code2
- Stylus intergration2
- jade intergration2
- Well documented0
Pros of rollup
- Makes it easy to publish packages4
- Easier configuration3
- Better tree shaking2
- Provides smaller bundle size2
- Integrates seamlessly with SystemJS1
- Produces very clean code1
- Very reliable1
- Very robust Plugin-API (years old Plugins still work)1
- Very flexible1
- Was built with ESM-Modules in mind1
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Cons of gulp
Cons of rollup
- No clear path for static assets1
- No Loader like Webpack (need to use sjs or ESM imports)1
- Almost everything needs to be a Plugin1
- Manual Chunking is a bit buggy1