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Closure Compiler vs ESLint: What are the differences?
Introduction
This markdown provides a comparison between Closure Compiler and ESLint, highlighting their key differences in a concise manner.
Compilation vs Linting: Closure Compiler is primarily a JavaScript compiler that performs static analysis, type checking, and code optimization, ultimately producing optimized and smaller code. On the other hand, ESLint is a linter that focuses on identifying and reporting code style and best practice violations, helping developers enforce consistent coding conventions.
Type Checking: Closure Compiler includes a robust type system that checks and enforces type annotations within JavaScript code. It can help catch type-related errors during compilation and optimize the code based on static typing information. ESLint, on the other hand, doesn't have built-in type checking capabilities and relies on code patterns and rules defined by the developer.
Code Optimization: Closure Compiler performs advanced code optimization techniques, such as dead code elimination, function inlining, and property renaming, to reduce the final code size and improve performance. ESLint does not perform code optimization and focuses solely on style and rule enforcement.
Supported Platforms: Closure Compiler is primarily designed for optimizing and compiling JavaScript code for web applications. It aims to improve page load times and runtime efficiency. ESLint is capable of analyzing JavaScript code for almost any environment or platform, including web applications, Node.js applications, and even browser extensions.
Configurability: Closure Compiler offers a rich set of configuration options that allow developers to customize the level of code optimization and type checking according to their specific needs. ESLint, being a linter, provides extensive configuration options to define coding rules and styles to enforce, ensuring consistency and maintainability across the codebase.
Integration: Closure Compiler is often used in build pipelines or integrated into development workflows to automatically optimize and transpile JavaScript code during the build process. ESLint integrates with code editors and IDEs, providing real-time code linting and highlighting of issues while the developer is writing code, helping catch mistakes early on.
In summary, Closure Compiler is primarily focused on optimizing and compiling JavaScript code, while ESLint is geared towards enforcing coding conventions, detecting style violations, and ensuring code quality.
Scenario: I want to integrate Prettier in our code base which is currently using ESLint (for .js and .scss both). The project is using gulp.
It doesn't feel quite right to me to use ESLint, I wonder if it would be better to use Stylelint or Sass Lint instead.
I completed integrating ESLint + Prettier, Planning to do the same with [ Stylelint || Sasslint || EsLint] + Prettier.
And have gulp 'fix' on file save (Watcher).
Any recommendation is appreciated.
In the case of .js files I would recommend using both Eslint and Prettier.
You can set up Prettier as an Eslint rule using the following plugin:
https://github.com/prettier/eslint-plugin-prettier
And in order to avoid conflicts between Prettier and Eslint, you can use this config:
https://github.com/prettier/eslint-config-prettier
Which turns off all Eslint rules that are unnecessary or might conflict with Prettier.
Pura vida! Well, I had a similar issue and at the end I decided to use Stylelint + Prettier for that job, in our case, we wanted that our linting process includes the SCSS files and not only the JS file, base on that we concluded that using only ESLint to do both things wasn't the best option, so, we integrated prettier with Stylelint, and for that we used a neat plugin that allowed us to use Prettier inside Stylelint here is the link, https://github.com/prettier/stylelint-prettier#recommended-configuration, I hope that this can help you, hasta pronto!, :)
you don't actually have to choose between these tools as they have vastly different purposes. i think its more a matter of understanding how to use them.
while eslint and stylelint are used to notify you about code quality issues, to guide you to write better code, prettier automatically handles code formatting (without notifying me). nothing else.
prettier and eslint both officially discourage using the eslint-plugin-prettier way, as these tools actually do very different things. autofixing with linters on watch isnt a great idea either. auto-fixing should only be done intentionally. you're not alone though, as a lot of devs set this up wrong.
i encourage you to think about what problem you're trying to solve and configure accordingly.
for my teams i set it up like this: - eslint, stylelint, prettier locally installed for cli use and ide support - eslint config prettier (code formatting rules are not eslints business, so dont warn me about it) - vscode workspace config: format on save - separate npm scripts for linting, and formatting - precommit hooks (husky)
so you can easily integrate with gulp. its just js after all ;)
Pros of Closure Compiler
- The best performing output1
- Small output size1
- Dead code elimination1
- ES6 support1
- Bundle support for CommonJS, ES6, .1
- Ease0
Pros of ESLint
- Consistent javascript - opinions don't matter anymore8
- Free6
- IDE Integration6
- Customizable4
- Focuses code review on quality not style2
- Broad ecosystem of support & users2