Rollup VS gulp

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.

Rollup.js is a JavaScript module bundler that compiles small pieces of code into larger, more complex applications. It is particularly well-suited for bundling ES6 modules and is known for its efficient tree-shaking capabilities, which eliminate unused code from the final bundle, resulting in smaller file sizes.

Rollup bundles runtime artifacts.

This is also a valid approach, but what we really want is to be able to write our code in TypeScript and have it transpile into the JavaScript we need. Enter Rollup.

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.