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UglifyJS vs Webpack: What are the differences?

  1. Code Transformation: UglifyJS focuses primarily on code minification, compression, and mangling to reduce the size of JavaScript files. On the other hand, Webpack is a module bundler that allows for code transformation using loaders and plugins, making it more versatile in handling different file types and dependencies.

  2. Module Bundling: Webpack excels in bundling various modules and assets into a single file, optimizing loading times and reducing network requests. UglifyJS, while it can be used with Webpack for minification, lacks the module bundling capabilities that Webpack offers out of the box.

  3. Asset Management: Webpack provides comprehensive asset management capabilities through loaders and plugins, allowing for the processing of CSS, images, fonts, and other assets alongside JavaScript files. UglifyJS, on the other hand, is specifically focused on optimizing and compressing JavaScript code without extensive support for managing other types of assets.

  4. Development vs Production: Webpack offers different configurations for development and production environments, enabling features like hot module replacement, source maps, and code splitting during development, while optimizing and minifying code for production builds. UglifyJS is typically used in production builds to minimize file sizes but does not have the same level of development-specific features as Webpack.

  5. Tree Shaking: Webpack's tree shaking functionality allows for the removal of unused code during the bundling process, resulting in smaller file sizes and more efficient applications. UglifyJS, although it can remove dead code paths, does not have the same level of sophisticated tree shaking capabilities inherent in Webpack.

  6. Plugin Eco-system: Webpack has a vast plugin ecosystem that extends its capabilities for tasks such as code optimization, asset management, and performance improvements. UglifyJS, while it can be used as a plugin with tools like Webpack, does not have a standalone plugin system like Webpack's, limiting its extensibility and adaptability in different development scenarios.

In Summary, the key differences between UglifyJS and Webpack lie in their focus on code transformations, module bundling, asset management, development features, tree shaking capabilities, and plugin ecosystems.

Decisions about UglifyJS and Webpack
Aleksandr Filatov
Contract Software Engineer - Microsoft · | 4 upvotes · 291K views
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.
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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.

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Pros of UglifyJS
Pros of Webpack
  • 0
    Great for javascript minification
  • 309
    Most powerful bundler
  • 182
    Built-in dev server with livereload
  • 142
    Can handle all types of assets
  • 87
    Easy configuration
  • 22
    Laravel-mix
  • 4
    Overengineered, Underdeveloped
  • 2
    Makes it easy to bundle static assets
  • 2
    Webpack-Encore
  • 1
    Redundant
  • 1
    Better support in Browser Dev-Tools

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Cons of UglifyJS
Cons of Webpack
    Be the first to leave a con
    • 15
      Hard to configure
    • 5
      No clear direction
    • 2
      Spaghetti-Code out of the box
    • 2
      SystemJS integration is quite lackluster
    • 2
      Loader architecture is quite a mess (unreliable/buggy)
    • 2
      Fire and Forget mentality of Core-Developers

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    What is UglifyJS?

    This package implements a general-purpose JavaScript parser/compressor/beautifier toolkit. It is developed on NodeJS, but it should work on any JavaScript platform supporting the CommonJS module system (and if your platform of choice doesn’t support CommonJS, you can easily implement it, or discard the exports.* lines from UglifyJS sources).

    What is 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.

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    What companies use UglifyJS?
    What companies use Webpack?
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    What tools integrate with UglifyJS?
    What tools integrate with Webpack?

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    What are some alternatives to UglifyJS and Webpack?
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    JavaScript
    JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.
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    GitHub is the best place to share code with friends, co-workers, classmates, and complete strangers. Over three million people use GitHub to build amazing things together.
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    Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.
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