Developers already have 101 decisions to make, and picking an automation tool is not an easy one. The requirements of a tool can be different depending on the person, the job, and the system you are building. I am hoping I can help make the choice a little easier with this article.
I discovered Gulp around 5 years ago, before adding Webpack to my toolbox. This addition was due to learning Gatsby JS and working on larger JavaScript projects. Before then I was writing JavaScript in just one file and I had no concept of a ‘dist’ or ‘build’ folder.
When I began using Webpack I was unsure what projects I should apply it to – should I stop using Gulp and jump in the deep end? I was unsure of its purpose. Its documentation is not for the faint-hearted, and the learning curve felt too steep for the sake of concatenating files. Turns out I was both wrong and right.
Before jumping into these decisions, it helps to understand how each tool works.
What is Gulp?
Gulp is an open-source task runner built on Node.js that enables the automation of time consuming and/or repetitive tasks. It reads files as streams and passes these streams to tasks (functions). These tasks modify the streams and create new files to use in production. It is run from the command line, and requires a package.json and a gulpfile.js file to run.
There are a number of plugins that can be used alongside Gulp to alter what happens to these streams. These include renaming files, uglifying file contents, and turning sass to css. They tend to be relatively plug-and-play with low barriers to entry.
What is Webpack
Webpack is an open-source module bundler with a primary purpose of bundling JavaScript files. It can be extended to take any number of files and packages using loaders. These can then be packaged up to reduce the number of assets in production. By bundling files, you decrease the number of requests to a server, increasing performance, and by combining this with code-splitting, you can allow code to be fetched on-demand, boosting performance further.
When Webpack bundles a project, it traverses all imports within a file, starting with the entry points defined in the config.js file and builds a dependency graph. This dependency graph shows how nodes are linked to each other, meaning webpack can include only what is necessary.
Loaders are used to pre-process files. Webpack provides a number of these, but it is possible to create custom loaders using Node.js. Each loader oversees a specific file type as by default, Webpack only understands JS and JSON.
How should I pick between the two?
The choice can differ from developer, as people have unique ways of doing the same task. That said, it comes down to project size.
For smaller projects with only a few JS/SASS files that need processing, I would recommend using Gulp. This could be concatenation and minification or moving from one directory to another. If you’re faced is a repetitive task that needs running such as batch minifying images, Gulp can also be used. I have found that the rollout process for Gulp is far quicker and smoother than Webpack.
On larger front-end projects that have lots of many assets, Webpack is definitely worth a look. It is brilliant for using with large JS frameworks such as React, due to the community support behind it. Many problems you come across will have already been solved by someone who has posted their solution online too – I find the ease in which a solution to an error can be found and implemented is often a large determinant of my sanity, as well as the profitability of a job!
My general rule is if the application you are building is large, with many assets that are not code (images/fonts) then Webpack is a great tool to use. If the project is smaller and there is only one JS file to serve up, Gulp should probably be your go-to. Webpack has a fairly high overhead when being added to a project, and if there are only a few tasks that need to be handled, Gulp can be more cost-effective. I would suggest weighing up the scope of the project, and whether it is likely to grow into something that needs that extra firepower.
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