Rollup VS esbuild

Next, we'll add the new folder com.mauricebrg.lambda-invoke.sdPlugin/imgs/actions/lambda and place an SVG with the Lambda logo from the official AWS Icon pack there. This allows us to reference a custom image later on. Now we'll start some preparations for us to invoke the Lambda function. We'll need to install the AWS SDK for that, but that requires another plugin for the bundler, since rollup seems to treat the AWS SDK as an ES Module, which it isn't. To work around that, we'll install the JSON plugin for rollup using npm i --save-dev @rollup/plugin-json and edit rollup.config.mjs:

Why are there so many JavaScript build tools? Gulp, Grunt, Webpack, Laravel Mix, Rollup.js, and now Vite. And these are just the ones that I've worked with. Haven't we solved this problem? And why build a new tool? Why not improve existing tools?

Vite (pronounced veet) was created by Evan You (Vue's creator) and launched in 2020. It uses native ES modules in the browser and esbuild for lightning-fast dev servers and Rollup for optimized production builds.

Vite is a modern frontend build tool used to develop fast and super efficient web applications. It serves files instantly and ensures that changes are updated immediately after they are implemented. It makes use of Rollup for optimized builds and has support for when you want to build a Javascript library (instead of a full app).

In 2025, mastering Vite for your React projects means leveraging powerful configurations, intelligent optimizations, and a robust plugin ecosystem. By understanding Vite’s modern architecture—native ES modules (ESM) during development and optimized Rollup bundling for production—you can significantly streamline your workflow, improve developer experience, and deliver fast, performant applications at scale.

6. Production-Ready Code Vite uses Rollup for production builds, which optimizes the code by bundling it efficiently, performing tree shaking, and minifying JavaScript. This results in smaller, optimized production builds that are ready for deployment.

Meanwhile, esbulid (developed in Go language, as introduced earlier) and rollup can also be used separately as packaging tools, and many third-party JS plugins are packaged using rollup.

npm packages dramatically sped up the productivity of developers by being able to leverage other developers' work. However, it had a major disadvantage: cjs was not compatible with web browsers. To solve this problem, the concept of bundlers was born. browserify was the first bundler which essentially worked by traversing an entry point and "bundling" all the require()-ed code into a single .js file compatible with web browsers. As time went on, other bundlers with additional features and differentiators were introduced. Most notably webpack, parcel, rollup, esbuild and vite (in chronological order).

Rollup is a module bundler for JavaScript which compiles small pieces of code into something larger and more complex, such as a library or application. Rollup Documentation

The JS SDK now lets you opt out of specific modules you don't need and optimize the final bundle size. You can do that by using either of two popular JavaScript build tools: Rollup or Webpack.

I recommend using NodeJS, not because it fits the event-driven, non-blocking model, but because it is very well-suited for reducing file size by bundling the code. Esbuild is a great tool to bundle your Lambda. It is already included in the CDK construct NodeJSFunction when using AWS CDK, and you don't need source maps, at least not in production.

You will find an issue related to pureannotations in esbuild repository.

Vite (pronounced veet) was created by Evan You (Vue's creator) and launched in 2020. It uses native ES modules in the browser and esbuild for lightning-fast dev servers and Rollup for optimized production builds.

Pre-bundle all the dependencies on the "optimization boundary" list into node_modules/.vite/deps/ folder. This step is done by esbuild.

ESBuild is a bundler. The subtitle on the website is literally “An extremely fast bundler for the web”. To bundle, pass —-bundle flag.

https://esbuild.github.io/

esbuild for bunding both the client and server separately