When comparing stealjs vs Browserify, the Slant community recommends Browserify for most people. In the question“What are the best frontend JavaScript module bundlers?” Browserify is ranked 4th while stealjs is ranked 10th. The most important reason people chose Browserify is:
Using browserify 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.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Supports several modules types
StealJS has support for AMD, CJS and ES6 module types.
Pro Support for LESS and CSS
StealJS can also load CSS and LESS files in addition to JavaScript modules.
Pro Mix ES6 AMD and CommonJS
StealJS supports using all three module types, even in the same file.
Pro ES6 module support
StealJs supports ES6 modules and their import
and export
methods without having to compile them to CommonJS require
.
Pro Support for ES6
StealJS supports transpiling of ES6 code to ES5
Pro Supports all systemjs based plugins
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 Share the same modules client-side and server-side
Because StealJS allows you to use the same require()
function as node.js, you can easily share modules between the client-side and server-side.
Pro Tap into npm's huge module ecosystem
Using StelaJS 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 Tap into npm's huge module ecosystem
Using browserify 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 Simple to use dependency management
To require a file, just use the require() function.
var foo = require('./foo.js');
These files may have dependencies of their own. Browserify will build a dependency graph and bundle it into a single file that you just have to put in a script tag.
<html>
<body>
<script src="bundle.js"></script>
</body>
</html>
Pro Share the same modules client-side and server-side
Because browserify allows you to use the same require() function as node.js, you can easily share modules between the client-side and server-side.
Pro Provides browser-friendly shims of Node modules
Browserify provides browser-friendly shims of Node modules, that allow for things like Node event systems, path parsing, URL parsing.
Pro deAMDify & debowerify allow using modules written for other systems
Browserify includes transforms such as deAMDify, that allow you to use modules written in the AMD module format, and debowerify, that allows you to use modules intended to be managed by Bower package manager.
Pro CJS module format
Pro Friendly plugin interface
Writing plugins is relatively easy and straight forward as each file, you can run a function that gives a file name and path, based on that you can decide if you want to do something like parse, transform, modify etc the file or skip it.
Cons
Con Changing the order of require statements causes unexpected behavior
Sometimes changing the order of the require
statements in a JavaScript file loaded with stealjs may cause unexpected problems or even breaking the code altogether.
Con Requires NodeJS environment just to get in the door
Browserify does nothing client-side. It's only a server-side builder. If you want to load files from other domains, look at RequireJS. If you want to break your code up into multiple modules, look at RequireJS or Webpack.
Con Requires a lot of magic for setup
Digging for high amount of modules