PostCSS vs Webpack

Overview

Webpack

Stacks45.0K

Followers28.1K

Votes752

GitHub Stars65.7K

Forks9.2K

PostCSS

Stacks2.4K

Followers547

Votes49

GitHub Stars28.9K

Forks1.6K

PostCSS vs Webpack: What are the differences?

PostCSS and Webpack are both popular tools used in web development, but they serve different purposes and have distinct features.

Build Process: While Webpack is primarily a module bundler, managing and optimizing the assets of a web application, PostCSS is a tool for processing CSS stylesheets. Webpack takes care of bundling together JavaScript, stylesheets, and other assets, whereas PostCSS focuses solely on transforming and optimizing CSS.
Language Support: Webpack is designed to work with a wide range of programming languages, including JavaScript, TypeScript, and even other transpiled languages such as Vue or React. On the other hand, PostCSS is a CSS processor and is specifically focused on transforming CSS code.
Plugin Ecosystem: Both PostCSS and Webpack have a rich ecosystem of plugins, but their purposes are different. Webpack plugins are generally used for asset optimization, code splitting, and providing additional functionalities to the build process. In contrast, PostCSS plugins are focused on transforming CSS, including adding vendor prefixes, minifying code, and optimizing stylesheets.
Configuration: Webpack is highly configurable through its webpack.config.js file, which allows developers to define entry points, output destinations, loaders, and plugins. PostCSS, on the other hand, can be configured through a postcss.config.js file or directly in the project's package.json file.
Integration: Webpack is often used as a build tool within a larger development workflow, integrating seamlessly with task runners like Gulp or Grunt. PostCSS is usually integrated with build systems like webpack, Rollup, or Gulp, providing its CSS processing capabilities as part of the overall build pipeline.
Performance Impact: Depending on the project setup and the number of plugins used, Webpack can have a significant impact on build time and bundle size. PostCSS, however, is primarily focused on optimizing and transforming CSS and typically has a smaller performance footprint compared to Webpack.

In summary, Webpack is a powerful module bundler and build tool with a wide range of features, while PostCSS is a CSS processor that focuses on transforming and optimizing CSS code. While both tools have plugin ecosystems and can be integrated into different development workflows, their primary purposes and functionalities are distinct.

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Advice on Webpack, PostCSS

Anonymous

CEO at ME!

Jun 17, 2020

Needs adviceon

Sass

Stylus

PostCSS

Originally, I was going to start using @{Sass}|tool:1171| with Parcel, but then I learned about @{Stylus}|tool:1172|, which looked interesting because it can get the property values of something directly instead of through variables, and @{PostCSS}|tool:3339|, which looked interesting because you can customize your Pre/Post-processing. Which tool would you recommend?

547k views547k

Comments

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

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	PostCSS
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.	PostCSS is a tool for transforming CSS with JS plugins. These plugins can support variables and mixins, transpile future CSS syntax, inline images, and more.
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 28.9K
GitHub Forks 9.2K	GitHub Forks 1.6K
Stacks 45.0K	Stacks 2.4K
Followers 28.1K	Followers 547
Votes 752	Votes 49
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 SystemJS integration is quite lackluster 2 Spaghetti-Code out of the box 2 Fire and Forget mentality of Core-Developers	Pros 21 The "babel" of CSS 15 Customizable 8 Autoprefixer 2 Variables 1 Mixins
Integrations
JavaScript	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Webpack, PostCSS?

Sass

Sass is an extension of CSS3, adding nested rules, variables, mixins, selector inheritance, and more. It's translated to well-formatted, standard CSS using the command line tool or a web-framework plugin.

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.

Less

Less is a CSS pre-processor, meaning that it extends the CSS language, adding features that allow variables, mixins, functions and many other techniques that allow you to make CSS that is more maintainable, themable and extendable.

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.

Stylus

Stylus is a revolutionary new language, providing an efficient, dynamic, and expressive way to generate CSS. Supporting both an indented syntax and regular CSS style.

Brunch

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

Bourbon

Bourbon is a library of pure sass mixins that are designed to be simple and easy to use. No configuration required. The mixins aim to be as vanilla as possible, meaning they should be as close to the original CSS syntax as possible.

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.

Related Comparisons

PostCSS vs Webpack: What are the differences?

PostCSS and Webpack are both popular tools used in web development, but they serve different purposes and have distinct features.

Build Process: While Webpack is primarily a module bundler, managing and optimizing the assets of a web application, PostCSS is a tool for processing CSS stylesheets. Webpack takes care of bundling together JavaScript, stylesheets, and other assets, whereas PostCSS focuses solely on transforming and optimizing CSS.
Language Support: Webpack is designed to work with a wide range of programming languages, including JavaScript, TypeScript, and even other transpiled languages such as Vue or React. On the other hand, PostCSS is a CSS processor and is specifically focused on transforming CSS code.
Plugin Ecosystem: Both PostCSS and Webpack have a rich ecosystem of plugins, but their purposes are different. Webpack plugins are generally used for asset optimization, code splitting, and providing additional functionalities to the build process. In contrast, PostCSS plugins are focused on transforming CSS, including adding vendor prefixes, minifying code, and optimizing stylesheets.
Configuration: Webpack is highly configurable through its webpack.config.js file, which allows developers to define entry points, output destinations, loaders, and plugins. PostCSS, on the other hand, can be configured through a postcss.config.js file or directly in the project's package.json file.
Integration: Webpack is often used as a build tool within a larger development workflow, integrating seamlessly with task runners like Gulp or Grunt. PostCSS is usually integrated with build systems like webpack, Rollup, or Gulp, providing its CSS processing capabilities as part of the overall build pipeline.
Performance Impact: Depending on the project setup and the number of plugins used, Webpack can have a significant impact on build time and bundle size. PostCSS, however, is primarily focused on optimizing and transforming CSS and typically has a smaller performance footprint compared to Webpack.

PostCSS vs Webpack

Overview