Overview

Webpack

Stacks41.6K

Followers28.1K

Votes752

GitHub Stars65.7K

Forks9.2K

Backpack

Stacks14

Followers67

Votes14

Backpack vs Webpack: What are the differences?

## Key Differences between Backpack and Webpack

Backpack is a simple build tool that focuses on bundling files for development purposes, whereas Webpack is a more powerful module bundler that can handle various assets beyond just JavaScript files.
Backpack's configuration is minimal and focuses on convention over configuration, making it easier for developers to get started quickly, while Webpack requires more configuration and setup to handle complex use cases and customization.
Backpack has a built-in development server that supports hot module replacement out of the box, providing a seamless development experience, whereas Webpack requires additional plugins and configuration to enable similar functionality.
Backpack is mainly targeted towards small to medium-sized projects with simpler build requirements, whereas Webpack is better suited for large-scale projects with more complex build needs and optimization requirements.
Backpack is lightweight and fast, making it ideal for rapid prototyping and smaller projects, while Webpack's extensive feature set and flexibility make it a better choice for enterprise-level applications with advanced requirements.
Backpack integrates seamlessly with Babel and PostCSS for transpiling and processing CSS, making it convenient for modern web development workflows, whereas Webpack also supports these tools but requires more configuration and setup to achieve the same level of integration.

In Summary, Backpack and Webpack cater to different needs - Backpack is a lightweight and simple build tool suitable for smaller projects, while Webpack is a more comprehensive module bundler geared towards larger and more complex applications.

Advice on Webpack, Backpack

Aleksandr

Contract Software Engineer - Microsoft at Microsoft-365

Dec 23, 2019

Decided

Why migrated?

I could define the next points why we have to migrate:

Decrease build time of our application. (It was the main cause).
Also jspm install takes much more time than npm install.
Many config files for SystemJS and JSPM. For Webpack you can use just one main config file, and you can use some separate config files for specific builds using inheritance and merge them.

301k views301k

Comments

Rob

Tech Lead at Runa

Mar 15, 2021

Decided

The developer experience Webpack gave us was not delighting anyone. It works and is stable and consistent. It is also slow and frustrating. We decided to check out Vite as an alternative when moving to Vue 3 and have been amazed. It is very early in development and there are plenty of rough edges, but it has been a breath of fresh air not waiting for anything to update. It is so fast we have found ourselves using devtools in browser less because changing styles is just as fast in code. We felt confident using the tool because although it is early in its development, the production build is still provided by Rollup which is a mature tool. We also felt optimistic that as good as it is right now, it will only continue to get better, as it is being worked on very actively. So far we are really happy with the choice.

55.7k views55.7k

Comments

Abigail

Dec 10, 2019

Decided

We mostly use rollup to publish package onto NPM. For most all other use cases, we use the Meteor build tool (probably 99% of the time) for publishing packages. If you're using Node on FHIR you probably won't need to know rollup, unless you are somehow working on helping us publish front end user interface components using FHIR. That being said, we have been migrating away from Atmosphere package manager towards NPM. As we continue to migrate away, we may publish other NPM packages using rollup.

224k views224k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Webpack	Backpack
A bundler for javascript and friends. Packs many modules into a few bundled assets. Code Splitting allows to load parts for the application on demand. Through "loaders" modules can be CommonJs, AMD, ES6 modules, CSS, Images, JSON, Coffeescript, LESS, ... and your custom stuff.	Backpack is minimalistic build system for Node.js. Inspired by Facebook's create-react-app, Zeit's Next.js, and Remy's Nodemon, Backpack lets you create modern Node.js apps and services with zero configuration. Backpack handles all the file-watching, live-reloading, transpiling, and bundling, so you don't have to.
Bundles ES Modules, CommonJS, and AMD modules (even combined); Can create a single bundle or multiple chunks that are asynchronously loaded at runtime (to reduce initial loading time); Dependencies are resolved during compilation, reducing the runtime size; Loaders can preprocess files while compiling, e.g. TypeScript to JavaScript, Handlebars strings to compiled functions, images to Base64, etc; Highly modular plugin system to do whatever else your application requires	-
Statistics
GitHub Stars 65.7K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 9.2K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 41.6K	Stacks 14
Followers 28.1K	Followers 67
Votes 752	Votes 14
Pros & Cons
Pros 309 Most powerful bundler 182 Built-in dev server with livereload 142 Can handle all types of assets 87 Easy configuration 22 Laravel-mix Cons 15 Hard to configure 5 No clear direction 2 Loader architecture is quite a mess (unreliable/buggy) 2 Fire and Forget mentality of Core-Developers 2 SystemJS integration is quite lackluster	Pros 6 Great docs 4 Zero-config 4 Easy setup
Integrations
JavaScript	Node.js ES6 JavaScript

What are some alternatives to Webpack, Backpack?

gulp

Build system automating tasks: minification and copying of all JavaScript files, static images. More capable of watching files to automatically rerun the task when a file changes.

Grunt

The less work you have to do when performing repetitive tasks like minification, compilation, unit testing, linting, etc, the easier your job becomes. After you've configured it, a task runner can do most of that mundane work for you—and your team—with basically zero effort.

Brunch

Brunch is an assembler for HTML5 applications. It's agnostic to frameworks, libraries, programming, stylesheet & templating languages and backend technology.

Parcel

Parcel is a web application bundler, differentiated by its developer experience. It offers blazing fast performance utilizing multicore processing, and requires zero configuration.

rollup

It is a module bundler for JavaScript which compiles small pieces of code into something larger and more complex, such as a library or application. It uses the new standardized format for code modules included in the ES6 revision of JavaScript, instead of previous idiosyncratic solutions such as CommonJS and AMD.

Vite

It is an opinionated web dev build tool that serves your code via native ES Module imports during dev and bundles it with Rollup for production.

Pingy CLI

Gulp and Grunt and other heavyweight build tools are great for complicated build workflows. Sometimes you want something simpler that doesn't take lots of configuration to get up and running. That's Pingy CLI.

System.js

It is a Universal Module Loader for JavaScript. If you've used RequireJs or a CommonJs bundler in the past, you have probably created modules.Configurable module loader enabling dynamic ES module workflows in browsers and NodeJS.

Microbundle

Zero-configuration bundler for tiny modules, powered by Rollup.

Esbuild

It is an extremely fast JavaScript and CSS bundler and minifier. Current build tools for the web are 10-100x slower than they could be. The main goal of this project is to bring about a new era of build tool performance, and create an easy-to-use modern bundler along the way.