webpack-dev-server VS esbuild-loader

So I spent couple hours to sort the bug report out properly :) https://github.com/webpack/webpack-dev-server/issues/4890

Webpacker also includes webpack-dev-server, so we made it work as well. Since I had Simpacker installed, I only had to change the devServer part in webpack.config.js to make it work with npm scripts.

current setup doesn't provide us a developer friendly environment, we need to check the index.html file every time we make a change, to resolve this we'll use webpack-dev-server.

It looks like you don't have webpack-dev-server setup. That's what will allow you to have that seamless dev experience.

esbuild-loader (secret sauce!) fork-ts-checker-webpack-plugin (helps us with typechecking) nodemon-webpack-plugin (We can also use webpack-dev-server)

Webpack Dev Server provides a live reload feature without having you to build & wait.

webpack-dev-server - Development server for webpack

i see. there are a loaders like https://github.com/privatenumber/esbuild-loader that works with webpack but i haven't given it a try yet.

you can use it with webpack didn't try it myself

If you are a webpack user and have heard about esbuild speed, you may start questioning your js-bundler choices. Luckily, you don't have to drop your hand-crafted webpack config just now. Thanks to esbuild-loader, you can get part of the speed improvement without doing a whole migration.

esbuild-loader (secret sauce!) fork-ts-checker-webpack-plugin (helps us with typechecking) nodemon-webpack-plugin (We can also use webpack-dev-server)

For people already on webpack, there's esbuild-loader (https://github.com/privatenumber/esbuild-loader)

esbuild is a JS and TS bundler that promises ultra-fast build times. We use webpack, and there is support to leverage esbuild with esbuild-loader.

The first thing I did was replace babel-loader and Terser (minification tool) with esbuild-loader. This made our JS compile around 12 times faster, it went down to 1.4 seconds. It was a good start.

In fact, the create-react-app-esbuild is only an encapsulation of esbuild-loader.

I just started using this: privatenumber/esbuild-loader: ⚡️ Speed up your Webpack build with esbuild (github.com)

Both would be good to file. I’m happy to investigate myself if you don’t have the time.

One thing to be aware of is that some other tools that integrate esbuild do so incorrectly. For example, the 3rd-party integration of esbuild into Webpack mis-configures esbuild in a way that causes issues with JSX: https://github.com/privatenumber/esbuild-loader/pull/107. This isn’t a problem with esbuild itself.