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Lerna vs Webpack: What are the differences?
Key Differences between Lerna and Webpack
1. Installation and Usage:
Lerna is a tool that helps with managing multiple JavaScript packages in a mono-repository, while Webpack is a module bundler primarily used for bundling JavaScript files.
2. Purpose:
Lerna focuses on optimizing the workflow for managing multiple packages and dependencies, allowing developers to share code across projects, while Webpack is primarily used to bundle and optimize assets for web applications.
3. Configuration:
Lerna uses a configuration file named lerna.json
to define workspace configuration and manage package versioning, while Webpack uses a configuration file named webpack.config.js
to define asset entry points, loaders, and output settings.
4. Features:
Lerna provides features such as managing package dependencies, versioning, publishing, and running commands across multiple packages, while Webpack provides features such as code splitting, hot module replacement, and asset optimization.
5. Integration:
Lerna works well with other tools in the JavaScript ecosystem such as npm and yarn, while Webpack can be integrated with other build tools and task runners like Gulp or Grunt.
6. Output:
Lerna does not bundle or transform code but instead manages packages and their dependencies, while Webpack bundles and transforms code, optimizing it for deployment.
In Summary, Lerna is focused on managing multiple packages and their dependencies in a mono-repository, while Webpack is primarily used for bundling and optimizing assets for web applications.
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 thannpm 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.
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.
Pros of Lerna
Pros of Webpack
- Most powerful bundler309
- Built-in dev server with livereload182
- Can handle all types of assets142
- Easy configuration87
- Laravel-mix22
- Overengineered, Underdeveloped4
- Makes it easy to bundle static assets2
- Webpack-Encore2
- Redundant1
- Better support in Browser Dev-Tools1
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Cons of Lerna
Cons of Webpack
- Hard to configure15
- No clear direction5
- Spaghetti-Code out of the box2
- SystemJS integration is quite lackluster2
- Loader architecture is quite a mess (unreliable/buggy)2
- Fire and Forget mentality of Core-Developers2