Overview

Webpack

Stacks41.6K

Followers28.1K

Votes752

GitHub Stars65.7K

Forks9.2K

Microbundle

Stacks24

Followers36

Votes2

GitHub Stars8.1K

Forks361

Microbundle vs Webpack: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will discuss the key differences between Microbundle and Webpack. Both Microbundle and Webpack are popular tools used in building and bundling JavaScript applications. However, they have distinct features and functionalities that set them apart from each other. Let's explore these differences in detail.

Configuration: One of the major differences between Microbundle and Webpack lies in their configuration setup. Microbundle emphasizes simplicity and convention over configuration. It requires minimal configuration and provides sensible defaults out of the box. On the other hand, Webpack offers extensive configuration options, allowing developers to fine-tune the bundling process according to their specific needs.
Size: Microbundle focuses on generating small and optimized bundles for applications. It optimizes the code to produce a minimal output by removing unnecessary dependencies and dead code elimination. In contrast, Webpack provides more flexibility but may generate larger bundle sizes. It allows for more complex bundling scenarios, including support for different module formats and various optimization techniques.
Bundle Output: Microbundle generates a single JavaScript file as the output, making it suitable for simple projects or libraries. It produces a self-contained bundle that can be directly included in a web page. On the other hand, Webpack offers more modular output options. It can create multiple bundles, split code into chunks, and even generate additional assets like CSS files or images.
Hot Module Replacement (HMR): Webpack has built-in support for Hot Module Replacement, a feature that enables live reloading and updating of modules without a full page refresh during development. This can greatly improve the development workflow by providing faster feedback and reducing the need to manually refresh the page. Microbundle, in its default configuration, does not support HMR out of the box, but it can be integrated with other tools or libraries to achieve similar functionality.
Plugin Ecosystem: Webpack has a rich ecosystem of plugins that extend its functionality. With a large number of available plugins, developers can easily add additional features like code splitting, caching, asset optimization, and more. Microbundle, being a more lightweight tool, has a limited plugin ecosystem in comparison. While it supports some plugins, the options are relatively fewer compared to Webpack.
Community Support: Webpack has a larger and more established community compared to Microbundle. It has been around for a longer time and is widely adopted in the industry. This means that developers can find extensive documentation, tutorials, and community support for any issues they may encounter while using Webpack. Microbundle, being a newer tool, may have a smaller community and comparatively fewer resources available for troubleshooting and support.

Summary

In summary, Microbundle and Webpack differ in their configuration approach, bundle size optimization, output options, HMR support, plugin ecosystem, and community support. Microbundle prioritizes simplicity and minimalism, while Webpack offers more flexibility and advanced features.

Advice on Webpack, Microbundle

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

Rob

Tech Lead at Runa

Mar 15, 2021

Decided

The developer experience Webpack gave us was not delighting anyone. It works and is stable and consistent. It is also slow and frustrating. We decided to check out Vite as an alternative when moving to Vue 3 and have been amazed. It is very early in development and there are plenty of rough edges, but it has been a breath of fresh air not waiting for anything to update. It is so fast we have found ourselves using devtools in browser less because changing styles is just as fast in code. We felt confident using the tool because although it is early in its development, the production build is still provided by Rollup which is a mature tool. We also felt optimistic that as good as it is right now, it will only continue to get better, as it is being worked on very actively. So far we are really happy with the choice.

55.7k views55.7k

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.

224k views224k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Webpack	Microbundle
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.	Zero-configuration bundler for tiny modules, powered by Rollup.
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	Bundles your library using nothing but a package.json; Support for ESnext & async/await; Supports multiple entry modules; Creates multiple output formats for each entry; Build-in Uglify compression & gzipped bundle size tracking
Statistics
GitHub Stars 65.7K	GitHub Stars 8.1K
GitHub Forks 9.2K	GitHub Forks 361
Stacks 41.6K	Stacks 24
Followers 28.1K	Followers 36
Votes 752	Votes 2
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 Fire and Forget mentality of Core-Developers 2 Loader architecture is quite a mess (unreliable/buggy) 2 SystemJS integration is quite lackluster	Pros 1 Works well with TypeScript 1 All the best Terser and Rollup settings already set
Integrations
JavaScript	JavaScript npm

What are some alternatives to Webpack, Microbundle?

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.

Esbuild

It is an extremely fast JavaScript and CSS bundler and minifier. Current build tools for the web are 10-100x slower than they could be. The main goal of this project is to bring about a new era of build tool performance, and create an easy-to-use modern bundler along the way.