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Parcel v2

parceljs.org

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Re: Parcel v2

#11

Post by hoten »

mrgalaxy wrote: post #7
hoten wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched from Parcel (v1; had trouble upgrading) to esbuild for my web game, and it's been much simpler. And faster, obviously. If you don't care about having a large plug-in ecosystem, or things like image optimization being handled directly by your bundler (and other stuff, from scanning the linked article), I'd say just go with esbuild

esbuild definitely caught my eye. I'm now noticing they support CSS and static files, which I guess I didn't realize. Is it easy to setup and configure? Because that is the one part of Webpack I cannot stand.

The documentation is top notch. I was able to learn it and switch over to it in about an hour or two for a moderately complex codebase targeting both Node and the web, and using Workers and some code splitting.

Re: Parcel v2

#12

Post by clmcleod »

It’s worth noting that Parcel v2 still needs work to support some basic use cases. For instance, it does not correctly build a Sass file that pulls in Bootstrap imports from NPM: https://github.com/parcel-bundler/parcel/issues/6002#issueco....

We tried switching to Parcel v2 but we had to downgrade back to v1.

Re: Parcel v2

#13

Post by mrgalaxy »

diskzero wrote: post #9
mrgalaxy wrote: post #4

Anyone here switch from Webpack to Parcel? Or, look into switching and decided not to? I recently upgraded Webpack from 4 to 5 and briefly looked for alternatives, but ultimately just decided to stick with Webpack since it works for us.

I also switched to Parcel. My use case was such that Parcel was a faster and simpler choice. That being said, I am starting to look at esbuild, in the hopes of making builds even simpler.

Parcel definitely looks simpler than Webpack. Of course Webpack tries to advertise itself that way, but it's never the case.

Re: Parcel v2

#14

Post by dang »

Previous thread:

Parcel 2 Beta 3 – improved build performance - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27222460 - May 2021 (69 comments)

Also related:

Parcel – Fast, zero-configuration web application bundler - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21961963 - Jan 2020 (201 comments)

Parcel: Fast, zero configuration web application bundler - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17547433 - July 2018 (91 comments)

Parcel – A fast, zero configuration web application bundler - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15853149 - Dec 2017 (163 comments)

Re: Parcel v2

#15

Post by herpderperator »

I think https://vitejs.dev/ is better. It pulls in a much smaller set of packages for a hello-world non-CRA react app. I think it was something like 1.3k lines of yarn.lock for Vite vs 6k lines for Parcel v2. JS projects shouldn't be bloated, even if this would get optimized-out for production.

In the ideal world, you would use esbuild only, but you still need the other features for development: hot reload, hot module repalcement, and pretty error pages when you cause a RuntimeError.

Re: Parcel v2

#16

Post by SCLeo »

mrgalaxy wrote: post #4

Anyone here switch from Webpack to Parcel? Or, look into switching and decided not to? I recently upgraded Webpack from 4 to 5 and briefly looked for alternatives, but ultimately just decided to stick with Webpack since it works for us.

I am just using parcel for my small projects because it is simple. It is actually zero configuration. Setting it up takes about 1 minute.

Re: Parcel v2

#17

Post by hsn915 »

mrgalaxy wrote: post #7
hoten wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched from Parcel (v1; had trouble upgrading) to esbuild for my web game, and it's been much simpler. And faster, obviously. If you don't care about having a large plug-in ecosystem, or things like image optimization being handled directly by your bundler (and other stuff, from scanning the linked article), I'd say just go with esbuild

esbuild definitely caught my eye. I'm now noticing they support CSS and static files, which I guess I didn't realize. Is it easy to setup and configure? Because that is the one part of Webpack I cannot stand.

esbuild is not really configuration based like webpack. It takes some config options but you either specify them via the command line or write your own script to build up the config object. (they have a js and go api).

It's so much nicer to use than all the other bundlers.

EDIT:

To clarify, the dev experience is:

- You start with just the basic bundler with simple options you specify on the command line or maybe in a shell script.

- Then you want to do a few more things, so you turn the shell script into a nodejs script (or a Go program).

- You get to make the build script as simple or complex as you want. To your own discretion and to fit your use case.

Re: Parcel v2

#18

Post by nsonha »

Used v1 mainly for quick prototyping and playing around with new tech (had rust and fable which I was interested in at the time). Look like they've been removed from official support so at least it's no longer zero config to play with.

Having said if this turns out to be a low hassle tool to build library then I might use it. My pain point is the boilerplates involved in building libraries. For apps, I'm pretty happy with nextjs default.

Re: Parcel v2

#19

Post by fishtoaster »

I set up a new project on Parcel*. It was amazing at first for getting going quickly with minimal config, but became increasingly expensive to deal with. Every week or so I'd run into what I'm calling the "webpack tax" where I'd spend twice as long having to figure out how to do something as the price for not using webpack. Every tool out there has a 95% chance of having docs (or at least a blogpost or StackOverflow answer somewhere) showing how to set it up in webpack. Then there's a 50% chance there'll be docs for how to set it up if you're using CRA. And if you're using anything else (eg Parcel), you've got a 30% chance at best to have docs on how to make it work.

Hopefully this situation improves as more competitors (like Parcel and Esbuild) mature, but at the moment I'd be pretty hesitant to build on anything that's not webpack or webpack based unless you're a lot more confident figuring out build tool setup from first principles than I am.

* V2, about a year ago, since my options were between the non-production-ready v2 and the explicitly unsupported v1.

Re: Parcel v2

#20

Post by silasb »

devit wrote: post #3
cetra3 wrote: post #2

I moved from Parcel (v1) to ViteJS because it felt a bit faster. Is there a performance or other type comparison between Parcel and some of the newer bundlers? (I.e, vite, snowpack, etc..)

https://esbuild.github.io/faq/#benchmark-details has Parcel 2 benchmarks. The summary is that you should use esbuild (or swc/spack when ready) for new projects and probably switch existing ones as well if feasible. It's possible that the Parcel 2 version they used is not the released one, so maybe it improved.

Probably should add https://bun.sh/ to the list as well, it's early but has some potential.
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