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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Build Automation
  4. Javascript Build Tools
  5. Lerna vs Webpack

Lerna vs Webpack

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Webpack
Webpack
Stacks45.0K
Followers28.1K
Votes752
GitHub Stars65.7K
Forks9.2K
Lerna
Lerna
Stacks1.2K
Followers137
Votes0
GitHub Stars36.0K
Forks2.3K

Lerna vs Webpack: What are the differences?

Key Differences between Lerna and Webpack

1. Installation and Usage: Lerna is a tool that helps with managing multiple JavaScript packages in a mono-repository, while Webpack is a module bundler primarily used for bundling JavaScript files. 2. Purpose: Lerna focuses on optimizing the workflow for managing multiple packages and dependencies, allowing developers to share code across projects, while Webpack is primarily used to bundle and optimize assets for web applications. 3. Configuration: Lerna uses a configuration file named lerna.json to define workspace configuration and manage package versioning, while Webpack uses a configuration file named webpack.config.js to define asset entry points, loaders, and output settings. 4. Features: Lerna provides features such as managing package dependencies, versioning, publishing, and running commands across multiple packages, while Webpack provides features such as code splitting, hot module replacement, and asset optimization. 5. Integration: Lerna works well with other tools in the JavaScript ecosystem such as npm and yarn, while Webpack can be integrated with other build tools and task runners like Gulp or Grunt. 6. Output: Lerna does not bundle or transform code but instead manages packages and their dependencies, while Webpack bundles and transforms code, optimizing it for deployment.

In Summary, Lerna is focused on managing multiple packages and their dependencies in a mono-repository, while Webpack is primarily used for bundling and optimizing assets for web applications.

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Advice on Webpack, Lerna

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
Abigail
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.

224k views224k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Webpack
Webpack
Lerna
Lerna

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.

It is a popular and widely used package written in JavaScript. It optimizes the workflow around managing multi-package repositories with git and npm.

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
-
Statistics
GitHub Stars
65.7K
GitHub Stars
36.0K
GitHub Forks
9.2K
GitHub Forks
2.3K
Stacks
45.0K
Stacks
1.2K
Followers
28.1K
Followers
137
Votes
752
Votes
0
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
    Spaghetti-Code out of the box
  • 2
    Loader architecture is quite a mess (unreliable/buggy)
  • 2
    SystemJS integration is quite lackluster
No community feedback yet
Integrations
JavaScript
JavaScript
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Webpack, Lerna?

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.

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.

Underscore

Underscore

A JavaScript library that provides a whole mess of useful functional programming helpers without extending any built-in objects.

Deno

Deno

It is a secure runtime for JavaScript and TypeScript built with V8, Rust, and Tokio.

Chart.js

Chart.js

Visualize your data in 6 different ways. Each of them animated, with a load of customisation options and interactivity extensions.

Brunch

Brunch

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

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.

Immutable.js

Immutable.js

Immutable provides Persistent Immutable List, Stack, Map, OrderedMap, Set, OrderedSet and Record. They are highly efficient on modern JavaScript VMs by using structural sharing via hash maps tries and vector tries as popularized by Clojure and Scala, minimizing the need to copy or cache data.

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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