rules_nodejs VS snowpack

Bazel is just the infrastructure to run webpack. You'd need to do some work to make webpack's state be cacheable (I dunno what options and such it has for this, maybe it's already there as an option). But if you're looking at Bazel for JS work you probably just want to use the existing and maintained rules for it: https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_nodejs It's been a while since I last looked at it but I don't think it has any caching for webpack.

> Is Bazel designed in a way that make it impossible to do JS monorepos well?

Not impossible, but you really need to go all in with it and follow its conventions and practices. See this for the main docs: https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_nodejs

One thing in particular that doesn't work well in the bazel world is doing your own stuff outside its BUILD.bazel files. If you're used to just npm install and jam some code in your package.json scripts... that doesn't usually work in the bazel world. If you have a lot of logic or tools in your build you'll likely need to go all in and make bazel starlark rules or macros that recreate that logic. Nothing is impossible, but expect to spend time getting up to speed and getting things working the bazel way.

I am using Bazel with rules_nodejs and Webpack. There's an example here.

It is probably possible to build Angular with ts_project(), however you'd need to manually manage the compiler (Angular has its own) and tsconfig (Angular needs special options). ts_library() does a lot of this for you, so I think it would probably be easier to use that than to force yourself onto ts_project(). The canonical Angular example uses ts_library() FWIW: https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_nodejs/tree/master/examples/angular

https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_nodejs

Nx is widely used in the Angular community. The Angular team at Google had plans to add Bazel support to the Angular CLI for many years, but the plans didn't materialize. The key folks (e.g., Alex Eagle) working on the effort left Google. Google employees no longer maintain rules_nodejs.

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.

Additional features for Bun include a transpiler and package manager. As hinted at in the name, it also includes bundling features, giving you the functionality that would otherwise require another tool, such as Snowpack or rollup.js. It also has a dead code elimination feature through its JavaScript minifier.

Even, there are several bundling tools available, including popular ones like Webpack and Snowpack.

once upon a time there was this thing called Snowpack: https://www.snowpack.devwhich had a lot of promises as vite (rollup w/ esm). So I migrated a project over from CRA to this thing.While startup speed was much much faster, it actually didn't make the app useable. I timed it meticulously for both CRA and snowpack build and found that the TTI was almost identical. I am not claiming the same to be vite but it's possible and I don't have a large app to prove it..

Snowpack.

> special snowflake build toolchains

That reminds me, wasn't there a build tool called Snowflake?

Oh, it was called Snowpack [1]. And it's no longer being actively maintained. Yeesh.

[1]: https://www.snowpack.dev/

Snowpack app - a single HTML page with Snowpack configuration

The first thing we need is a JavaScript project for our app. We'll use Snowpack as our bundler. Open a terminal located in a directory for the project and type npx create-snowpack-app react-couchdb --template @snowpack/app-template-minimal. Snowpack will create a skeleton for our React application and install all dependencies. Once it's done doing its job, type cd react-couchdb to get into the newly created project directory. create-snowpack-app is very similar to create-react-app in how it sets-up your project, but it's a lot less intrusive (You don't even need to use eject at any point).

Snowpack appears to be no longer maintained.

Before you get too deep into Snowpack, be aware that they recommend using other tools now because it’s no longer maintained.