gulp VS webpack

Gulp

Description: A toolkit for automating repetitive tasks in the development workflow, such as minification, compilation, and live reloading. It uses a "streaming" approach for fast builds. Use Cases: Automating tasks in web development, like compiling SCSS, minifying JavaScript, and optimizing images. Website: Gulp

Gulp: A streaming build system.

Gulp is a powerful task runner that automates various development workflows, streamlining the management of repetitive tasks.

Gulp is a task runner that automates repetitive tasks in the development workflow.

But what is a symbolic link exactly? It comes from programming and I often liken symbolic links to basic redirects but with greater stability. However, not every package needs a place in .bin. Packages like nodemon, webpack, gulp, eslint and create-vue are found in .bin because they need to be executed. On the other hand, packages like animate.css, swiper and express operate at the application layer, so you won't find them in .bin after installation. How does npm determine whether a package is executable or not? It's simple: by using the bin property in your package.json to specify the executable path. If your package is executable, you can set it accordingly. Let's take a look at prettier's package.json file

A little gulp and npm knowledge is beneficial, but not required

Many web pages use CSS and JavaScript files to handle various features and styles. Each file, however, requires a separate HTTP request, which can slow down page loading. Concatenation comes into play here. It involves combining multiple CSS or JavaScript files into a single file. As a result, pages load faster, reducing the time spent requesting individual files. Gulp, Grunt, and Webpack are some of the tools that can assist you in speeding up the concatenation process. They enable seamless merging of many files during development, ensuring deployment readiness.

Once you build a simple Vite backend integration, try not to complicate Vite's configuration unless you absolutely must. Vite has become one of the most popular bundlers in the frontend space, but it wasn't the first and it certainly won't be the last. In my 7 years of building for the web, I've used Grunt, Gulp, Webpack, esbuild, and Parcel. Snowpack and Rome came-and-went before I ever had a chance to try them. Bun is vying for the spot of The New Hotness in bundling, Rome has been forked into Biome, and Vercel is building a Rust-based Webpack alternative.

to then serve to the browser. If I was using something like Vite or Webpack I would have gotten this handling for free.

17. Webpack

The JS code gets transpiled by tools like Babel, then bundled (often by Webpack) into a single or few files (like bundle.js). This optimizes the website to load faster, as the browser can fetch everything from one file instead of multiple.

Remember that Webpack is highly configurable, and this article only scratches the surface of what's possible. Be sure to check the official Webpack documentation for more detailed information and advanced configurations.

Website: webpack.js.org

With Webpack 5, a new feature has helped microfrontends proliferate: Module Federation. Module Federation allows JavaScript code to be loaded — synchronously or asynchronously — at runtime.

Firefox: Extensions utilizing bundlers like webpack or Extension.js require zipped source code. Additionally, Firefox mandates submissions in Cross-Platform Install (XPI) format.

Webpack is one of the oldest and most widely used bundlers in web development, created by Tobias Koppers in 2012. It gained popularity after Browserify and RequireJS and has become the go-to choice for managing complex projects.

Micro-frontend has always aroused my curiosity: I wanted to understand how they work, how to build them, what their pros and cons are. In 2018, inspired by this topic, I tried to build something similar to single-spa in one of the pet projects. At that time, there was no Webpack Module Federation (WMF), and Webpack itself seemed inconvenient. The choice fell on ESBuild and importmap. Browser support for importmap at the time was mostly on paper or with special flags in browsers. For this reason, I used a polyfill. But, surprisingly, everything worked and even in several projects.

Packagers are the ones we most frequently come into contact with, such as Webpack Vite and Parcel. The latter may not be commonly used, but it is also a well-established tool.