Closure Compiler vs Webpack

Overview

Webpack

Stacks45.0K

Followers28.1K

Votes752

GitHub Stars65.7K

Forks9.2K

Closure Compiler

Stacks281

Followers62

Votes5

GitHub Stars7.6K

Forks1.2K

Closure Compiler vs Webpack: What are the differences?

Introduction

This Markdown code provides a comparison between Closure Compiler and Webpack, highlighting their key differences.

File Types and Languages Supported: Closure Compiler is primarily designed for optimizing JavaScript, while Webpack is a module bundler that supports multiple file types, including JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. Closure Compiler also supports TypeScript, whereas Webpack requires additional configuration to work with TypeScript files.
Optimization Approach: Closure Compiler focuses on advanced techniques like dead code elimination, inlining, and aggressive variable renaming to produce highly optimized code. On the other hand, Webpack's optimization is mainly focused on bundling and code splitting, allowing developers to create efficient bundles for web applications.
Build Process and Configuration: Closure Compiler requires the use of a command-line interface or build tools for optimization and minification. It requires explicit configuration to define the desired optimization level and fine-tune the output. In contrast, Webpack simplifies the build process through a configuration file, where developers can define various loaders and plugins to handle different file types and perform optimization.
Bundle Size and Code Splitting: Closure Compiler analyzes the entire codebase and produces a single optimized output file, resulting in a relatively smaller bundle size. Webpack, on the other hand, enables code splitting, allowing developers to split large bundles into smaller chunks, resulting in more efficient loading and caching of code.
Module System Support: Closure Compiler provides a built-in module system that allows developers to write modular code by using the goog.module syntax. It also supports compatibility with CommonJS and AMD modules. In contrast, Webpack supports a wide range of module systems, including CommonJS, AMD, ES2015 modules, and more, making it highly versatile.
Ecosystem and Community Support: Closure Compiler is a part of the Google Closure Tools suite and has a dedicated user community. It offers various libraries and tools for JavaScript development. Webpack, on the other hand, has a vibrant ecosystem with a large number of plugins and loaders contributed by the community, providing extensive features and integrations for web development.

In summary, Closure Compiler is a specialized tool focused on optimizing JavaScript code with advanced techniques, while Webpack is a versatile module bundler offering optimization, code splitting, and extensive community support for a wide range of file types and module systems.

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CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Advice on Webpack, Closure Compiler

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.

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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	Closure Compiler
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.	The Closure Compiler is a tool for making JavaScript download and run faster. It is a true compiler for JavaScript. Instead of compiling from a source language to machine code, it compiles from JavaScript to better JavaScript. It parses your JavaScript, analyzes it, removes dead code and rewrites and minimizes what's left. It also checks syntax, variable references, and types, and warns about common JavaScript pitfalls.
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	parses JavaScript, analyzes it, removes dead code and rewrites and minimizes what's left; checks syntax, variable references, and types, and warns about common JavaScript pitfalls; transpiling some ECMAScript 6 code to ECMAScript 3
Statistics
GitHub Stars 65.7K	GitHub Stars 7.6K
GitHub Forks 9.2K	GitHub Forks 1.2K
Stacks 45.0K	Stacks 281
Followers 28.1K	Followers 62
Votes 752	Votes 5
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 Spaghetti-Code out of the box 2 SystemJS integration is quite lackluster 2 Fire and Forget mentality of Core-Developers	Pros 1 The best performing output 1 Bundle support for CommonJS, ES6, . 1 ES6 support 1 Dead code elimination 1 Small output size
Integrations
JavaScript	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Webpack, Closure Compiler?

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.

Backpack

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.

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.

Microbundle

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

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.

Related Comparisons

Closure Compiler vs Webpack: What are the differences?

Introduction

This Markdown code provides a comparison between Closure Compiler and Webpack, highlighting their key differences.

File Types and Languages Supported: Closure Compiler is primarily designed for optimizing JavaScript, while Webpack is a module bundler that supports multiple file types, including JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. Closure Compiler also supports TypeScript, whereas Webpack requires additional configuration to work with TypeScript files.
Optimization Approach: Closure Compiler focuses on advanced techniques like dead code elimination, inlining, and aggressive variable renaming to produce highly optimized code. On the other hand, Webpack's optimization is mainly focused on bundling and code splitting, allowing developers to create efficient bundles for web applications.
Build Process and Configuration: Closure Compiler requires the use of a command-line interface or build tools for optimization and minification. It requires explicit configuration to define the desired optimization level and fine-tune the output. In contrast, Webpack simplifies the build process through a configuration file, where developers can define various loaders and plugins to handle different file types and perform optimization.
Bundle Size and Code Splitting: Closure Compiler analyzes the entire codebase and produces a single optimized output file, resulting in a relatively smaller bundle size. Webpack, on the other hand, enables code splitting, allowing developers to split large bundles into smaller chunks, resulting in more efficient loading and caching of code.
Module System Support: Closure Compiler provides a built-in module system that allows developers to write modular code by using the goog.module syntax. It also supports compatibility with CommonJS and AMD modules. In contrast, Webpack supports a wide range of module systems, including CommonJS, AMD, ES2015 modules, and more, making it highly versatile.
Ecosystem and Community Support: Closure Compiler is a part of the Google Closure Tools suite and has a dedicated user community. It offers various libraries and tools for JavaScript development. Webpack, on the other hand, has a vibrant ecosystem with a large number of plugins and loaders contributed by the community, providing extensive features and integrations for web development.

Closure Compiler vs Webpack

Overview

Closure Compiler vs Webpack: What are the differences?