I am trying to deepen my understanding of modules in JavaScript beyond just using CommonJS, AMD and ES Modules.
This has lead to me look more into webpack to understand how it actually makes modules work in the browser without relying on the still relatively new ES Modules. From what I understand, Webpack bundles the JS, converting import and require statements to its own statements and ships it with a runtime and manifest which allows it to execute them. So Webpack has gotten past the lack of module support by basically implementing its own?
I have tried to compare this to a different bundler — Parcel, but I can’t seem to find any information about how it handles modules.
Does anyone know if my understanding of Webpack is correct, and how that compares to how Parcel does it?
Appreciate any help in advance.
Thanks
The implementation of the ES6 import/export syntax has rendered many traditional module loaders such as RequireJS / AMD and rollup somewhat obsolete. However, asset bundlers like Webpack and Parcel still find their place in modern web development.
An assets bundler packs multiple files into a smaller set of files (including JS, images, fonts, LESS, SCSS etc.), thereby reducing the number of requests to the server and communication overhead. The bundling process typically involves script minification, dead code removal and dependencies management. This also allows more modular front-end web development.
In some ways, Parcel, being newer, is more advanced than Webpack. Parcel supports many different languages and file types out of the box, from web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, to lower level languages like Rust, and anything that compiles to WebAssembly (WASM), to assets like images, fonts, videos, and more. You can build multiple targets at once and live-update them as you make changes. Parcel compiles all of your files in isolation in parallel inside workers, caching all of them as it goes along. No explicit configuration is needed for code splitting using dynamic import() statements.
Both Webpack and Parcel provide you a development server to test your project on a browser. Unlike Webpack, the entry point of Parcel is an HTML file instead of a JS file. You should not declare type=”module” within the < script> tags.
Another asset bundler is Browserify. It is a simpler tool which merely bundles your files. It is not as rich in features as Webpack and Parcel.