# Webpack - where to begin?

**URL:** <https://discourse.aurelia.io/t/webpack-where-to-begin/1890>\
**Category:** Help Requests\
**Created:** [November 14, 2018, 7:34pm UTC](https://discourse.aurelia.io/t/webpack-where-to-begin/1890 "2018-11-14T19:34:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![rayoub](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex027/user_avatar/discourse.aurelia.io/rayoub/32/1130_2.png) [@rayoub](https://discourse.aurelia.io/u/rayoub)\
**Post date:** [November 14, 2018, 7:34pm UTC](https://discourse.aurelia.io/t/webpack-where-to-begin/1890/1 "2018-11-14T19:34:16Z")

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I’ve been using aurelia for a while now but not as a professional web developer. So that is occasional use. Way back in the day I setup my project with jspm and jspm bundling. But I’m finding it is way too slow to load and not everything wants to be bundled so easily. I’m thinking about moving to webpack but the documentation confuses me to the point of I don’t know where to begin. For instance, the CLI ‘au new’ command creates a new project and does a ton of stuff without making it clear what exactly it is doing. The skeleton app is just as confusing. Tons of stuff I don’t need or want to know about. I don’t want to make this sound like a rant. Perhaps I’m the only person that struggles with some of this stuff.

What I would like to know is where do I begin with webpack without completely resetting my package.json file, all my gulp tasks etc… Is there a set of instructions on integrating webpack with aurelia that is complete and transparent and doesn’t end up telling me to run ‘au new’ or look at a skeleton app?

Thanks for any guidance.

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**Author:** ![huochunpeng](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/49beb7/32.png) [@huochunpeng](https://discourse.aurelia.io/u/huochunpeng)\
**Post date:** [November 14, 2018, 11:21pm UTC](https://discourse.aurelia.io/t/webpack-where-to-begin/1890/2 "2018-11-14T23:21:33Z")

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That’s what aurelia-cli tries to resolve: make it easier to start with webpack (or requirejs/systemjs). The `au new` command supposes to ease the setup.

Setting up webpack with aurelia from scratch is a very demanding task. You would not want to do that.

Besides webpack, aurelia-cli also provides requirejs/systemjs based setup. When you do `au new`, choose 3.custom, then choose requirejs or systemjs. This might be easier for you to migrate from jspm, because it does not require you to modify your app source code.

Using webpack requires you to use `PLATFORM.moduleName("some-component")` in many parts of your code. And it has some complication if you use aurelia-dialog.

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**Author:** ![lvparkington](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex027/user_avatar/discourse.aurelia.io/lvparkington/32/736_2.png) [@lvparkington](https://discourse.aurelia.io/u/lvparkington)\
**Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 10:27am UTC](https://discourse.aurelia.io/t/webpack-where-to-begin/1890/3 "2018-11-15T10:27:20Z")

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I believe they are working to produce a version of Aurelia that does not require Webpack or Aurelia-CLI which would be a tremendous help in producing robust minimalist Aurelia Net Core ( \>= 2.1) applications using an IDE of choice ([Aurelia... Webpack-less-ly?](https://discourse.aurelia.io/t/aurelia-webpack-less-ly/1694))