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install size

webpack

webpack is a module bundler. Its main purpose is to bundle JavaScript files for usage in a browser, yet it is also capable of transforming, bundling, or packaging just about any resource or asset.

Table of Contents

  1. Install
  2. Introduction
  3. Concepts
  4. Contributing
  5. Support
  6. Core Team
  7. Sponsoring
  8. Premium Partners
  9. Other Backers and Sponsors
  10. Gold Sponsors
  11. Silver Sponsors
  12. Bronze Sponsors
  13. Backers
  14. Special Thanks

Install

Install with npm:

npm install --save-dev webpack

Install with yarn:

yarn add webpack --dev

Introduction

webpack is a bundler for modules. The main purpose is to bundle JavaScript files for usage in a browser, yet it is also capable of transforming, bundling, or packaging just about any resource or asset.

TL;DR

  • 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.

Get Started

Check out webpack's quick Get Started guide and the other guides.

Browser Compatibility

webpack supports all browsers that are ES5-compliant (IE8 and below are not supported). webpack also needs Promise for import() and require.ensure(). If you want to support older browsers, you will need to load a polyfill before using these expressions.

Concepts

Plugins

webpack has a rich plugin interface. Most of the features within webpack itself use this plugin interface. This makes webpack very flexible.

Name Status Install Size Description
mini-css-extract-plugin
mini-css-npm
mini-css-size
Extracts CSS into separate files. It creates a CSS file per JS file which contains CSS.
compression-webpack-plugin
compression-npm
compression-size
Prepares compressed versions of assets to serve them with Content-Encoding
i18n-webpack-plugin
i18n-npm
i18n-size
Adds i18n support to your bundles
html-webpack-plugin
html-plugin-npm
html-plugin-size
Simplifies creation of HTML files (index.html) to serve your bundles
extract-text-webpack-plugin
extract-npm
extract-size
Extract text from a bundle, or bundles, into a separate file

Loaders

webpack enables use of loaders to preprocess files. This allows you to bundle any static resource way beyond JavaScript. You can easily write your own loaders using Node.js.

Loaders are activated by using loadername! prefixes in require() statements, or are automatically applied via regex from your webpack configuration.

Files

Name Status Install Size Description
raw-loader
raw-npm
raw-size
Loads raw content of a file (utf-8)
val-loader
val-npm
val-size
Executes code as module and considers exports as JS code
url-loader
url-npm
url-size
Works like the file loader, but can return a Data Url if the file is smaller than a limit
file-loader
file-npm
file-size
Emits the file into the output folder and returns the (relative) url

JSON

Name Status Install Size Description
json-npm
json-size
Loads a JSON file (included by default)
json5-npm
json5-size
Loads and transpiles a JSON 5 file
cson-npm
cson-size
Loads and transpiles a CSON file

Transpiling

Name Status Install Size Description
<script>
script-npm
script-size
Executes a JavaScript file once in global context (like in script tag), require()s are not parsed
babel-npm
babel-size
Loads ES2015+ code and transpiles to ES5 using Babel
traceur-npm
traceur-size
Loads ES2015+ code and transpiles to ES5 using Traceur
type-npm
type-size
Loads TypeScript like JavaScript
awesome-typescript-loader
awesome-typescript-npm
awesome-typescript-size
Awesome TypeScript loader for webpack
coffee-npm
coffee-size
Loads CoffeeScript like JavaScript

Templating

Name Status Install Size Description
html-npm
html-size
Exports HTML as string, requires references to static resources
pug-npm
pug-size
Loads Pug templates and returns a function
jade-npm
jade-size
Loads Jade templates and returns a function
md-npm
md-size
Compiles Markdown to HTML
posthtml-npm
posthtml-size
Loads and transforms a HTML file using PostHTML
hbs-npm
hbs-size
Compiles Handlebars to HTML

Styling

Name Status Install Size Description
<style>
style-npm
style-size
Add exports of a module as style to DOM
css-npm
css-size
Loads CSS file with resolved imports and returns CSS code
less-npm
less-size
Loads and compiles a LESS file
sass-npm
sass-size
Loads and compiles a Sass/SCSS file
stylus-npm
stylus-size
Loads and compiles a Stylus file
postcss-npm
postcss-size
Loads and transforms a CSS/SSS file using PostCSS

Linting & Testing

Name Status Install Size Description
mocha-npm
mocha-size
Tests with mocha (Browser/NodeJS)
eslint-npm
eslint-size
PreLoader for linting code using ESLint
jshint-npm
jshint-size
PreLoader for linting code using JSHint

Frameworks

Name Status Install Size Description
vue-npm
vue-size
Loads and compiles Vue Components
polymer-npm
polymer-size
Process HTML & CSS with preprocessor of choice and require() Web Components like first-class modules
angular-npm
angular-size
Loads and compiles Angular 2 Components
riot-npm
riot-size
Riot official webpack loader

Performance

webpack uses async I/O and has multiple caching levels. This makes webpack fast and incredibly fast on incremental compilations.

Module Formats

webpack supports ES2015+, CommonJS and AMD modules out of the box. It performs clever static analysis on the AST of your code. It even has an evaluation engine to evaluate simple expressions. This allows you to support most existing libraries out of the box.

Code Splitting

webpack allows you to split your codebase into multiple chunks. Chunks are loaded asynchronously at runtime. This reduces the initial loading time.

Optimizations

webpack can do many optimizations to reduce the output size of your JavaScript by deduplicating frequently used modules, minifying, and giving you full control of what is loaded initially and what is loaded at runtime through code splitting. It can also make your code chunks cache friendly by using hashes.

Contributing

We want contributing to webpack to be fun, enjoyable, and educational for anyone, and everyone. We have a vibrant ecosystem that spans beyond this single repo. We welcome you to check out any of the repositories in our organization or webpack-contrib organization which houses all of our loaders and plugins.

Contributions go far beyond pull requests and commits. Although we love giving you the opportunity to put your stamp on webpack, we also are thrilled to receive a variety of other contributions including:

  • Documentation updates, enhancements, designs, or bugfixes
  • Spelling or grammar fixes
  • README.md corrections or redesigns
  • Adding unit, or functional tests
  • Triaging GitHub issues -- especially determining whether an issue still persists or is reproducible.
  • Searching #webpack on twitter and helping someone else who needs help
  • Teaching others how to contribute to one of the many webpack's repos!
  • Blogging, speaking about, or creating tutorials about one of webpack's many features.
  • Helping others in our webpack gitter channel.

If you are worried or don't know where to start, you can always reach out to Sean Larkin (@TheLarkInn) on Twitter or simply submit an issue and a maintainer can help give you guidance!

We have also started a series on our Medium Publication called The Contributor's Guide to webpack. We welcome you to read it and post any questions or responses if you still need help.

Looking to speak about webpack? We'd love to review your talk abstract/CFP! You can email it to webpack [at] opencollective [dot] com and we can give pointers or tips!!!

Creating your own plugins and loaders

If you create a loader or plugin, we would <3 for you to open source it, and put it on npm. We follow the x-loader, x-webpack-plugin naming convention.

Support

We consider webpack to be a low-level tool used not only individually but also layered beneath other awesome tools. Because of its flexibility, webpack isn't always the easiest entry-level solution, however we do believe it is the most powerful. That said, we're always looking for ways to improve and simplify the tool without compromising functionality. If you have any ideas on ways to accomplish this, we're all ears!

If you're just getting started, take a look at our new docs and concepts page. This has a high level overview that is great for beginners!!

Looking for webpack 1 docs? Please check out the old wiki, but note that this deprecated version is no longer supported.

If you want to discuss something or just need help, here is our Gitter room where there are always individuals looking to help out!

If you are still having difficulty, we would love for you to post a question to StackOverflow with the webpack tag. It is much easier to answer questions that include your webpack.config.js and relevant files! So if you can provide them, we'd be extremely grateful (and more likely to help you find the answer!)

If you are twitter savvy you can tweet #webpack with your question and someone should be able to reach out and help also.

If you have discovered a 🐜 or have a feature suggestion, feel free to create an issue on Github.

License

FOSSA Status

Core Team


Tobias Koppers

Core


Founder of webpack


Johannes Ewald

Loaders & Plugins


Early adopter of webpack


Sean T. Larkin

Public Relations


Founder of the core team


Kees Kluskens

Development


Sponsor


Sponsoring

Most of the core team members, webpack contributors and contributors in the ecosystem do this open source work in their free time. If you use webpack for a serious task, and you'd like us to invest more time on it, please donate. This project increases your income/productivity too. It makes development and applications faster and it reduces the required bandwidth.

This is how we use the donations:

  • Allow the core team to work on webpack
  • Thank contributors if they invested a large amount of time in contributing
  • Support projects in the ecosystem that are of great value for users
  • Support projects that are voted most (work in progress)
  • Infrastructure cost
  • Fees for money handling

Premium Partners

Other Backers and Sponsors

Before we started using OpenCollective, donations were made anonymously. Now that we have made the switch, we would like to acknowledge these sponsors (and the ones who continue to donate using OpenCollective). If we've missed someone, please send us a PR, and we'll add you to this list.

[Google Angular Team](https://angular.io/), [Architects.io](http://architects.io/), MoonMail MONEI

Gold Sponsors

Become a gold sponsor and get your logo on our README on Github with a link to your site.

Silver Sponsors

Become a silver sponsor and get your logo on our README on Github with a link to your site.

Bronze Sponsors

Become a bronze sponsor and get your logo on our README on Github with a link to your site.

Backers

Become a backer and get your image on our README on Github with a link to your site.

Special Thanks to

(In chronological order)

  • @google for Google Web Toolkit (GWT), which aims to compile Java to JavaScript. It features a similar Code Splitting as webpack.
  • @medikoo for modules-webmake, which is a similar project. webpack was born because I wanted Code Splitting for modules-webmake. Interestingly the Code Splitting issue is still open (thanks also to @Phoscur for the discussion).
  • @substack for browserify, which is a similar project and source for many ideas.
  • @jrburke for require.js, which is a similar project and source for many ideas.
  • @defunctzombie for the browser-field spec, which makes modules available for node.js, browserify and webpack.
  • Every early webpack user, which contributed to webpack by writing issues or PRs. You influenced the direction...
  • @shama, @jhnns and @sokra for maintaining this project
  • Everyone who has written a loader for webpack. You are the ecosystem...
  • Everyone I forgot to mention here, but also influenced webpack.