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Webpack vs Yarn: What are the differences?

Introduction:

In this article, we will explore the key differences between Webpack and Yarn. Both Webpack and Yarn are popular tools in the web development ecosystem, but they serve different purposes and have distinct features.

  1. Installation and Package Management Approach: Webpack is primarily a module bundler that helps in managing and bundling the assets of a web application. It requires the installation of plugins and loaders to work with different types of files and assets. On the other hand, Yarn is a package manager that simplifies the process of managing dependencies and ensures consistent installations across different environments. Yarn manages the package.json file and provides commands for installing, updating, and removing dependencies.

  2. Build Process and Configuration: Webpack provides a highly configurable build process. It allows developers to define entry points, specify loaders and plugins, and set up optimization strategies. Webpack's rich configuration options enable fine-grained control over the build process, making it suitable for complex projects. Yarn, on the other hand, does not have a build process itself. It focuses on package management and relies on other tools like Webpack or Babel for the actual build process.

  3. Dependency Resolution and Caching: Yarn uses a deterministic algorithm for package resolution, ensuring that all developers working on a project have the same dependencies. It creates a yarn.lock file that locks the versions of the packages, thus providing consistent builds. Webpack, being a module bundler, doesn't handle dependency resolution in the same way as Yarn. It relies on the package.json file and the installed modules to resolve dependencies at runtime.

  4. Concurrent Package Installations: Yarn introduced the concept of "parallel" and "circular" modes in package installations, which allows faster installation of dependencies. Yarn downloads and installs packages concurrently, leveraging parallel processing to speed up the process. Webpack, on the other hand, does not handle package installations, so it doesn't have the same capability.

  5. Hot Module Replacement (HMR): Webpack has built-in support for Hot Module Replacement, which allows developers to see the changes they make in their code immediately reflected in the browser without a full page refresh. HMR is particularly useful during development as it speeds up the iteration process. Yarn, being a package manager, doesn't have native support for HMR and relies on the module bundler like Webpack to provide this feature.

  6. Community and Ecosystem: Webpack has a large and active community, with a vibrant ecosystem of plugins, loaders, and presets. The extensive community support ensures that Webpack can be used for a wide range of projects and scenarios. Yarn, while popular, is primarily focused on package management and doesn't have the same level of community and ecosystem as Webpack.

In summary, Webpack is a powerful module bundler with extensive configuration options and HMR support, while Yarn is a package manager that simplifies dependency management and provides consistent installations across environments. Webpack focuses on the build process and has a larger community and ecosystem, while Yarn excels at package management and dependency resolution. Both tools are essential in modern web development workflows, but their roles and features are distinct.

Advice on Webpack and Yarn
Needs advice
on
npmnpm
and
YarnYarn

From a StackShare Community member: “I’m a freelance web developer (I mostly use Node.js) and for future projects I’m debating between npm or Yarn as my default package manager. I’m a minimalist so I hate installing software if I don’t need to- in this case that would be Yarn. For those who made the switch from npm to Yarn, what benefits have you noticed? For those who stuck with npm, are you happy you with it?"

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Replies (14)
Julian Sanchez
Lead Developer at Chore Champion · | 11 upvotes · 259.7K views
Recommends
on
YarnYarn
at

We use Yarn because it allows us to more simply manage our node_modules. It also simplifies commands and increases speed when installing modules. Our teams module download time was cut in half after switching from NPM to Yarn. We now require all employees to use Yarn (to prevent errors with package-lock.json and yarn.lock).

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Recommends
on
npmnpm

I use npm since new version is pretty fast as well (Yarn may be still faster a bit but the difference isn't huge). No need for other dependency and mainly Yarn sometimes do not work. Sometimes when I want to install project dependencies I got error using Yarn but with npm everything is installed correctly.

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Recommends
on
YarnYarn

p.s.

I am not sure about the performance of the latest version of npm, whether it is different from my understanding of it below. Because I use npm very rarely when I had the following knowledge.

------⏬

I use Yarn because, first, yarn is the first tool to lock the version. Second, although npm also supports the lock version, when you use npm to lock the version, and then use package-lock.json on other systems, package-lock.json Will be modified. You understand what I mean, when you deploy projects based on Git...

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Mark Nelissen
Recommends
on
npmnpmnpmnpm

I use npm because I also mainly use React and TypeScript. Since several typings (from DefinitelyTyped) depend on the React typings, Yarn tends to mess up which leads to duplicate libraries present (different versions of the same type definition), which hinders the Typescript compiler. Npm always resolves to a single version per transitive dependency. At least that's my experience with both.

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Recommends
on
YarnYarn

As far as I know Yarn is a super module of NPM. But it still needs npm to run.

Yarn was developed by Facebook's guys to fix some npm issues and performance.

If you use the last version of npm most of this problem does not exist anymore.

You can choose the option which makes you more confortable. I like using yarn because I'm used to it.

In the end the packages will be the same. Just try both and choose the one you feel more confortable. :)

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Recommends
on
YarnYarn

I am a minimalist too. I once had issues with installing Nuxt.js using NPM so I had to install Yarn but I also found that the Dev experience was much better

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Digital All
Recommends
on
npmnpm

I use npm because its packaged with node installation and handles npm tokens in CI/CD tools for private packages/libraries.

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Francois Leurent
Recommends
on
npmnpm
at

We tend to stick to npm, yarn is only a fancy alternative, not 10x better. Using a self -hosted private repository (via sinopia/npm-mirror) make package locking (mostly) pointless.

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tataata
Frontend designer and developer · | 3 upvotes · 244.8K views
Recommends
on
YarnYarn

Yarn made it painless for the team to sync on versions of packages that we use on the project <3

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Recommends
on
npmnpm

I use npm because its the official package manager for Node. It's reliability, security and speed has increased over time so the battle is over!

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Denys Slipetskyy
Lead Software Engineer · | 3 upvotes · 246K views
Recommends
on
YarnYarn
at

I use Yarn because it process my dependencies way faster, predictable deps resolution order, upgrade-interactive is very handy + some Yarn specific features (workspaces, Plug’n’Play alternative installation strategy) ...

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Izzur Zuhri
Recommends
on
npmnpm

I use npm because it has a lot of community support and the performance difference with alternative tool is not so significant for me.

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Shuuji TAKAHASHI
Recommends
on
YarnYarn

I use Yarn because it outputs nice progress messages with cute emoji and installs packages quickly if the package is cached. Also, Yarn creates yarn.lock file which makes the developer use the consistent environment.

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Tor Hagemann
Principal Software Engineer at Socotra · | 3 upvotes · 145K views
Recommends
on
npmnpmYarnYarn

You should use whichever had the best DX (developer experience) for your team. If you are doing a massive front-end project, consider yarn if not only because it makes it a snap to go from zero to ready. What some people say about npm being more stable or easier for smaller projects is highly true as well. (not to mention, you sometimes have to install yarn) But, note that official NodeJS Docker images ship with both npm and yarn. If you want to use yarn, put package-lock=false and optionally save-exact=true in your project's .npmrc file. Compare whether you prefer the ergonomics of yarn global add over npm install -g or see fewer meaningless warnings for the specific set of dependencies you leverage.

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Decisions about Webpack and Yarn
Aleksandr Filatov
Contract Software Engineer - Microsoft · | 4 upvotes · 299.4K views
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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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.

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Oleksandr Fedotov
Senior Software Engineer at joyn · | 3 upvotes · 287.6K views

As we have to build the application for many different TV platforms we want to split the application logic from the device/platform specific code. Previously we had different repositories and it was very hard to keep the development process when changes were done in multiple repositories, as we had to synchronize code reviews as well as merging and then updating the dependencies of projects. This issues would be even more critical when building the project from scratch what we did at Joyn. Therefor to keep all code in one place, at the same time keeping in separated in different modules we decided to give a try to monorepo. First we tried out lerna which was fine at the beginning, but later along the way we had issues with adding new dependencies which came out of the blue and were not easy to fix. Next round of evolution was yarn workspaces, we are still using it and are pretty happy with dev experience it provides. And one more advantage we got when switched to yarn workspaces that we also switched from npm to yarn what improved the state of the lock file a lot, because with npm package-lock file was updated every time you run npm install, frequent updates of package-lock file were causing very often merge conflicts. So right now we not just having faster dependencies installation time but also no conflicts coming from lock file.

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Petr Bambušek
Head of Frontend at Mews · | 2 upvotes · 302.2K views
Chose
YarnYarn
over
npmnpm
at
()

This was no real choice - we switched the moment Yarn was available, and never looked back. Yarn is the only reasonable frontend package manager that's actually being developed. They even aim to heal the node_modules madness with v2! Npm is just copying its ideas on top of introducing massive bugs with every change.

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Pros of Webpack
Pros of Yarn
  • 309
    Most powerful bundler
  • 182
    Built-in dev server with livereload
  • 142
    Can handle all types of assets
  • 87
    Easy configuration
  • 22
    Laravel-mix
  • 4
    Overengineered, Underdeveloped
  • 2
    Makes it easy to bundle static assets
  • 2
    Webpack-Encore
  • 1
    Redundant
  • 1
    Better support in Browser Dev-Tools
  • 85
    Incredibly fast
  • 22
    Easy to use
  • 13
    Open Source
  • 11
    Can install any npm package
  • 8
    Works where npm fails
  • 7
    Workspaces
  • 3
    Incomplete to run tasks
  • 2
    Fast

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Cons of Webpack
Cons of Yarn
  • 15
    Hard to configure
  • 5
    No clear direction
  • 2
    Spaghetti-Code out of the box
  • 2
    SystemJS integration is quite lackluster
  • 2
    Loader architecture is quite a mess (unreliable/buggy)
  • 2
    Fire and Forget mentality of Core-Developers
  • 16
    Facebook
  • 7
    Sends data to facebook
  • 4
    Should be installed separately
  • 3
    Cannot publish to registry other than npm

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What is Webpack?

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.

What is Yarn?

Yarn caches every package it downloads so it never needs to again. It also parallelizes operations to maximize resource utilization so install times are faster than ever.

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What companies use Webpack?
What companies use Yarn?
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What are some alternatives to Webpack and Yarn?
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.
Babel
Babel will turn your ES6+ code into ES5 friendly code, so you can start using it right now without waiting for browser support.
Parcel
Parcel is a web application bundler, differentiated by its developer experience. It offers blazing fast performance utilizing multicore processing, and requires zero configuration.
Browserify
Browserify lets you require('modules') in the browser by bundling up all of your dependencies.
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.
See all alternatives