When comparing Webpack vs RequireJS, the Slant community recommends Webpack for most people. In the question“What are the best frontend JavaScript module bundlers?” Webpack is ranked 1st while RequireJS is ranked 12th. The most important reason people chose Webpack is:
Plugins and loaders are easy to write and allow you to control each step of the build, from loading and compiling CoffeeScript, LESS and JADE files to smart post processing and asset manifest building.
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Pros
Pro Rich and flexible plugin infrastructure
Plugins and loaders are easy to write and allow you to control each step of the build, from loading and compiling CoffeeScript, LESS and JADE files to smart post processing and asset manifest building.
Pro Tap into npm's huge module ecosystem
Using Webpack opens you up to npm, that has over 80k modules of which a great amount work both client-side and server-side. And the list is growing rapidly.
Pro Can create a single bundle or multiple chunks loaded on demand, to reduce initial loading time
Webpack allows you to split your codebase into multiple chunks. Chunks are loaded on demand. This reduces the initial loading time.
Pro Supports source maps for easier debugging
Source maps allow for easier debugging, because they allow you to find the problems within the origin files instead of the output file.
Pro ES6 module support
Webpack supports ES6 modules and their import
and export
methods without having to compile them to CommonJS require
Pro Share the same modules client-side and server-side
Because Webpack allows you to use the same require() function as node.js, you can easily share modules between the client-side and server-side.
Pro Bundles CommonJs and AMD modules (even combined)
Webpack supports AMD and CommonJS module styles. It performs clever static analysis on the AST of your code. It even has an evaluation engine to evaluate simple expressions. This allows you to support most existing libraries.
Pro Mix ES6 AMD and CommonJS
Webpack supports using all three module types, even in the same file.
Pro Limit plugin integration issues
Pro Works with basically every desktop browser, even IE6
RequireJS supports IE6+, FF2+, Safari3.2+, Chrome3+ & Opera 10+.
Pro Well documented
The RequireJS module loader is extremely well documented. So no matter whether you're a pro at JS based web development or just a newbie, you will find the documentation very helpful whenever you're stuck or just starting out. Everything is well-defined and logically placed in proper sections in a manner such that it is very easy to understand.
Pro You don't need a server to get started
One of the best advantages of RequireJS over Browserify is that you don't need a nodejs environment to get started. Just "require" your dependencies and it takes care of loading them. By contrast, Browserify requires a running NodeJS implementation so you can build your one monolithic file, then you can push the file to your static web server.
Pro Has a RequireJS optimizer
After building all the modules to be loaded, the built files can be optimized as well (minified and concatenated), even though this is a completely optional step, but doing so could be a lot beneficial for your site's performance.
Pro Lazily-loaded JS can access already loaded modules by name
Yet its run-time is still competitive if not better than Webpack's at higher density levels of modules.
Pro Always running site unbundled
With other loaders, aka browserify, it isn't possible to run your site without first bundling. Require.js can load everything async which is pretty powerful.
Pro Supports nested dependencies
If your project has nested dependencies, you won't have to worry about resolving them at all. Because RequireJS will do that for you.
Pro Well tested
Since the RequireJS is quite popular among the dev community, that automatically means that problems get sorted out very quickly and most of the core code has already been tested.
Pro AMD & CJS support
While RequireJS is mainly an AMD implementation, it can, with rare exceptions, implement CJS as well.
Pro Simple
Because of its easy to understand documentation, the RequireJS module loader is super simple to use; module definitions are as easy as defining just a key/value pair.
Pro Can load new modules without being recompiled
It's the one of the few modules in this category that can handle IOC-style dependency injection. The others work well for apps that have knowable dependency lists at compile time, but this is the only one that can load new modules without being recompiled.
Pro Supports hot RE-loading
Persistent console logging, generational statefulness, promotes stateless DOM development.
Cons
Con Config file may be hard to understand
Due to a somewhat hard to grasp syntax, configuring Webpack may take some time.
Con Can not load files discovered during runtime
Con On its way out
Latest stable release is 2 months old with little development occurring on Github.
Con Poor handling of circular references
If you create a circular reference between two files, it will typically quietly break - the reference on one side will end up undefined.
Con AMD spec uses globals
The global ‘require’ and ‘define’ methods make namespace collisions likely if building a 3rd party plugin. AMD loaders line require are best if you control the site.