Good day
I have created an aurelia app using version 0.35 using Requirejs and Typescript. My question which path do I take to upgrade my app to the new bundler? Do I go with Webpack or the CLI build in bundler and module loader? And in that case which one? Alameda or RequireJS?
Which one would you recommend any why?
Any help appreciated.
Johan
This entry in the documentation covers this topic a bit:
https://aurelia.io/docs/cli/updating#updating-the-aurelia-cli
Recently, I was considering the implications of upgrading a project as well. In my case I decided that upgrading the CLI wouldn’t be worth it.
Don’t get me wrong. I love the CLI and use it exclusively when creating a new project, but I don’t feel it offers a compelling reason to upgrade for the sake of using the latest. It’s great to get up and running quickly. However, I’m sure I’m not using it to its full potential. But I will definitely use the latest for any new projects.
On the point of bundlers/loaders, I switched an existing project from RequireJS to Webpack once Webpack was available via the CLI. I found the easiest way to make the switch was to simply run the CLI and have it build out the Webpack version, then move my existing project into it and fix the issues.
I chose Webpack because I’m generally a “use what’s battle tested and widely adopted” sort of person. I’m not keen on jumping into new or obscure tech with little documentation or community support. With that in mind, I will say that Webpack isn’t something that’s intuitive… at all. I honestly barely know a thing about it. Fortunately, the CLI set things up so I don’t really have to know much if I don’t want to.
I’m interested in writing code to get stuff done, not muck about in configuration nonsense. Which is exactly why I love Aurelia.
This is the exact thing frameworks like Aurelia are striving to do. Thx for the great feedback.
@johan1 if you cant say which one you need for your project, most likely it doesnt matter. The differences are subtle feature wise so you typically cant go wrong. Pick Webpack if you want to be able to zoom through endless articles and stay flexible or the built in bundler which takes care of most things out of the box. The detail between RJs or Alameda mainly comes down to preferences and consumed dependencies.
Alameda only supports newer browsers, and it’s few percent faster than requirejs.
If you don’t use systemjs feature, you don’t have to use it, standard requirejs is fine.
You can try both upgrading path, try webpack and also cli-bundler. Webpack has a huge community, so as long as you can get your app running, it should be fine. But cli-bundler is a nature upgrade for you because you are using an old one, be sure to read the new cli doc on upgrade.
Good luck!