ReactTemplate VS esbuild

I've never found CRA makes project management any easier (aside from the first few days after setting up a new project). In the long run it's always been a pain as it prevents you from touching most of the config. Personally I use this ReactTemplate which uses many of the same tools as CRA but with everything exposed and much more sensible defaults so it's easy to configure for whatever you want and nothing is forced upon you.

Most people have only ever used Webpack via CRA which is a terribly optimized config. If you design your own Webpack config it can be so fast that you won't notice it. (Example)

I recommend setting up tsconfig with strict mode enabled and ESLint and TypeScript ESLint rules to be fairly strict. This is a great way to learn with guard rails as it'll slap you when you try to do something which is unsafe or too loosely typed. Here's a reference ESLint config that is frequently updated with any newly released rules that fit well. This happens to be for a TypeScript React project, but you can always trim out the rules from plugins that aren't relevant for you.

Don't forget ESLint. Arguably more important than many of those other things for fixing the common mistakes that most developers make. And note that the recommended ESLint configs are incredibly conservative so you probably want to customize the rules to get much higher quality. An example of one of my recommended React/TypeScript ESLint configs.

And then I have a ton of code-level tools and configs that I use all the time. Many of which are in this React Template if you want to pick through it. There's code spellcheckers, dependency update checkers, extensive linting configs and more.

If you want a reference, take a look at this eslint config for some good rules to use.

If you want a reference, this ReactTemplate is very simple and in many cases can be used as a drop-in for CRA.

No reason to go overkill with a metaframework. All you need is a new build config. That's all CRA is, a collection of configuration files. I choose to just configure what I need myself so I have control over it and can easily customize it and get all of the features and performance that I want if I want it. The content of your app shouldn't need to change just because your build process changes. (If you want a reference, here's the React Template I start with.)

Yeah here's the config from my open source React Template: https://github.com/CreativeTechGuy/ReactTemplate/blob/main/.eslintrc.js

PS: If you are curious, this is my React Template that I was describing above.

During my search for deploying Lambdas via GitHub actions, I came across a tutorial that utilized ncc for converting TypeScript and bundling. While ncc is effective, I discovered esbuild, which proved to be significantly faster and perfectly suited to my requirements.

The advent of esbuild, the native support for ES Modules in browsers, the widespread adoption of import map, the emergence of tools like Native Federation, and the Nx ecosystem all combine to forge a flexible and well-maintained Micro Frontend Architecture.

EsBuild is a relatively new, blazing-fast JavaScript bundler and minifier. It stands out for its high performance, significantly speeding up the build process in development pipelines.

Unlike Webpack, the Vite DevServer only compiles files when they are requested. It leverages ES module imports, which allow JS files to import other files without needing to bundle them together during development. When one file changes, only that file needs to be re-compiled, and the rest can remain unchanged. Project files are compiled with Rollup.js. Third-party dependencies in node_modules are pre-compiled using the ultra-fast esbuild bundler for maximum speed, and they are cached until the dependency version changes. Vite also provides a client script for hot module reloading.

Use esbuild to build the React code into a form executable on both the server and client sides.

The functions will bundle using esbuild. For that, it is required to install esbuild globally:

TSX is the newest and most improved version of our ts-node, using ESBuild to transpile TS files to JS very quickly. The most interesting part is that TSX was developed to be a complete replacement for Node, so you can actually use TSX as a TypeScript REPL, if you install it globally with npm i -g tsx, just run tsx in your terminal and you can write TSX natively. But what's even cooler is that you can load TSX for all TypeScript files using --loader tsx when you run your file. For example, let's say we have this file called index.ts:

esbuild plus Vite is out of developer preview and enabled by default, yielding 67%, 87%, 80% speed improvements for build time, hybrid build time and hybrid serve time respectively.

Bundling with esbuild

Besides Webpack, there are many other popular web bundlers available, such as Parcel, Esbuild, Rollup, and more. They all have their own unique features and strengths, and you should make your decision based on the needs and requirements of your specific project. Please refer to their official websites for details.