esbuild
An ultra-fast JavaScript bundler for modern web development
About esbuild
esbuild is a next-generation bundler designed for speed and simplicity. It compiles and bundles JavaScript, TypeScript, CSS, and JSX with unmatched performance, often completing builds in milliseconds. With built-in support for ESM and CommonJS, CSS modules, tree shaking, and source maps, esbuild streamlines your workflow while delivering production-ready code.
FAQ
esbuild is written in Go and compiles to native code, which is much faster than JavaScript-based bundlers that rely on a JIT-compiled language. Go is designed for parallelism, allowing esbuild to fully utilize all available CPU cores. Additionally, esbuild is written from scratch with performance in mind, using efficient memory management and minimizing passes over the data.
In benchmarks, esbuild is significantly faster than other bundlers. For a JavaScript benchmark, esbuild took 0.39 seconds, while Parcel 2 took 14.91 seconds, Rollup with Terser took 34.10 seconds, and Webpack 5 took 41.21 seconds. For a TypeScript benchmark, esbuild took 0.10 seconds, Parcel 2 took 6.91 seconds, and Webpack 5 took 16.69 seconds.
The upcoming roadmap includes code splitting as a first priority. Potential future features include HTML content type support, but the project aims to reach a stable state and avoid adding major features to keep the tool focused and efficient.
esbuild is in a late-stage beta and is considered stable enough for some early adopters. It is already used by other projects like Vite, Amazon CDK, and Phoenix. However, it is still in active development and may not be suitable for all organizations, especially those requiring extensive support or major features.
Since esbuild is written in native code (Go), some anti-virus software may incorrectly flag it as a virus. This does not mean esbuild is malicious. The project takes supply chain security seriously, and virtually all of its code is first-party, except for one dependency on Google's supplemental Go packages.
esbuild is designed to use memory efficiently, with algorithms that minimize passes over the data and reuse AST data while it's still hot in the CPU cache. Go's compact memory storage and value semantics also contribute to faster performance by reducing memory usage and allocation overhead.
esbuild is not planning to include support for other frontend languages (e.g., Elm, Svelte, Vue, Angular), TypeScript type checking, an API for custom AST manipulation, hot-module reloading, or module federation in its core. These features are intended to be handled by plugins or other tools.
Effort is made to keep the esbuild API stable, even though the version is not yet 1.0.0. Patch versions are intended for backwards-compatible changes, and minor versions for backwards-incompatible changes. For real-world use, it is recommended to pin the exact version or at least the major and minor versions.
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