gulp vs rollup: What are the differences?

Introduction

Gulp and Rollup are both popular build tools used in web development to automate tasks and optimize code. While they serve similar purposes, there are key differences between the two.

1. Development Approach: Gulp takes a task-based approach, where developers define individual tasks to be executed on specific files. It uses streams to process files in a pipeline manner, allowing for flexibility and easy customization. On the other hand, Rollup follows a module-based approach, where it analyzes the dependency tree of modules and bundles them into a single output file, optimizing runtime performance.

2. Build Speed: Gulp is known for its fast build times due to its streaming nature, allowing it to process files in memory rather than creating temporary files. However, Rollup's tree-shaking feature, which eliminates unused code, makes it more efficient in terms of generating optimized bundles for production.

3. Configurability: Gulp provides a flexible and customizable configuration, enabling developers to define their own tasks and specify various plugins and options. It offers a wide range of plugins to execute tasks such as minification, concatenation, and transpilation. Rollup, on the other hand, has a simpler and more opinionated configuration, focusing primarily on bundle optimizations rather than task automation.

4. Code Splitting: Gulp does not directly support code splitting, which is the ability to split code into smaller chunks and load it on demand. It requires additional plugins and manual configuration to achieve this functionality. Rollup, on the other hand, has built-in support for code splitting, making it easier to create efficient and modular bundles.

5. ES Module Support: Gulp primarily works with CommonJS modules, although there are plugins available to handle ES modules. Rollup, on the other hand, natively supports ES modules and is optimized for tree-shaking and bundling ES modules efficiently.

6. Community and Adoption: Gulp has been around for a longer time and has a larger community and ecosystem of plugins and extensions. It is widely adopted and has extensive documentation and resources available. Rollup, although gaining popularity, has a smaller community and plugin ecosystem compared to Gulp.

In summary, Gulp offers a flexible task-based approach with a larger community and faster build times, while Rollup focuses on module-based bundling, code splitting, and native ES module support.