Snowpack is a build tool that uses native browser ES modules to remove bundling steps in the development environment and streamline the build process.
Snowpack is a build tool for web applications that can be used without bundling in development. This is entirely thanks to the power of native browser ES modules, which allow the tool to remove bundling steps in the development environment. As a result, Snowpack helps make the development environment build faster and remains fast even as your codebase grows.
Snowpack also introduced the concept of unbundling your application in development, which helps you avoid the need to rebuild and rebundle entire chunks of your application every time you save a single file. It just does an instant update of the changed file via Hot Module Replacement.
The official website describes Snowpack as “a modern, lightweight toolchain for web application development.”
New features in Snowpack 2.0
When version 1.0 was released to the public in January, it came with exciting features such as:
- A dev environment that starts up in 50ms or less
- Capability to reflect changes instantly in the browser
- Integration with your favorite bundler for production-optimized builds
- Out-of-the-box support for TypeScript, JSX, CSS modules, and more.
- Ability to connect your favorite tools with custom build scripts and third-party plugins
The Snowpack team released version 2.0 on May 26 with a number of exciting new features, including:
- O(1) file builds
- Improved dev environment
- Improved automatic HMR support
- Ability to customize your build with build scripts
- Zero-config prototyping
- Create Snowpack App (CSA) templates
O(1) file builds
The official website describes snowpack 2.0 as “a build system designed for this new era of web development.” O(1) file building involves the process of only rebuilding or rebundling a file that is changed in development without rebuilding the entire application. In other words, if you make a change to a file in development, only that file would be rebuilt without affecting other files.
This is different from other build tools such as webpack, which is an O(n) build tool. They are called O(n) build tools because traditional bundling has a complexity of O(n). When a file is changed in traditional bundling, the build tool will rebuild the entire chunks in the application because of just a single file.
Snowpack 2.0 was shipped with support for O(1) file building, which allows it to make updates at lightning-fast speed because when a file is changed in development, only that file is rebuilt.
O(1) file building includes many benefits of traditional O(n) bundling, including:
- Faster builds
- A project’s file size does not affect the build’s performance
- Individual files are cached on first build and are only rebuilt if there is a change
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