Unlock Faster Build Times with esbuild-loader
The web development landscape is undergoing a significant transformation. Traditional build tools like webpack and rollup.js, written in JavaScript, are being challenged by newer tools like esbuild, Vite, and swc, built with languages like Go and Rust. These new tools offer significantly faster build times, making them an attractive option for developers.
The Challenge of Migrating to New Build Tools
While new projects may adopt these new tools from the start, existing projects invested in traditional build tools like webpack face a daunting task in migrating to newer alternatives. However, there’s a middle ground that can be explored. Enter esbuild-loader, a webpack loader built on top of esbuild, which allows users to swap out ts-loader or babel-loader with itself, resulting in massively improved build speeds.
A Faster Build Process with esbuild-loader
To demonstrate the power of esbuild-loader, let’s create a new React application using Create React App. We’ll then migrate it to use esbuild-loader, comparing the build times before and after the migration.
Creating a Baseline Application
We’ll start by creating a new React application using Create React App, which uses babel-loader behind the scenes. We’ll then run a build of our simple app to establish a baseline for performance.
Introducing esbuild-loader
To customize our Create React App build, we’ll use Create React App Configuration Override (CRACO), which allows us to tweak the configuration in place. We’ll add esbuild-loader and CRACO as dependencies, then swap out babel-loader for esbuild-loader in our configuration.
The Results: A Tremendous Performance Improvement
After migrating to esbuild-loader, our build time has been reduced by approximately one-third. This is a significant improvement, and as our codebase scales and our application grows, compilation time can skyrocket. With esbuild-loader, we should reap ongoing benefits to our build time.
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