When comparing Volo vs Component, the Slant community recommends Volo for most people. In the question“What are the best open source front-end package managers?” Volo is ranked 9th while Component is ranked 10th. The most important reason people chose Volo is:
Volo is based around AMD, which is great for asynchronous loading, and if you try to add a non-AMD package, it will interactively ask you for its dependencies and exports.
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Pros
Pro Automatically converts files to AMD for you
Volo is based around AMD, which is great for asynchronous loading, and if you try to add a non-AMD package, it will interactively ask you for its dependencies and exports.
Pro Provides command endpoints for task management
Volo also allows you to provide a volofile that lets you run various tasks. Volo provides a helper object for running cross platform command line commands, and also allows you to use binaries in node_modules
or create your own.
Pro Quickly bootstrap your project with templates
Volo has a create
command that can copy template projects from GitHub, so you can get set up quickly.
Pro Allows for extensible commands
Sometimes you might require some additional commands, other than the ones Volo provides; Volo has you covered in these cases as well. The package manager is extremely extensible at its core, and can be easily modified and extended.
Pro Loads packages directly from Github
If any project exists on Github, that means you can use it along with Volo in your frontend projects.
Pro Vertically integrated with the build process
Component handles more than just package management; it also deals with the build process and bundling, so you don't have to find and manage a separate solution. This lets you get up and running faster with less to worry about.
Pro Also manages non javascript components
Components can be html snippets or css in addition to Javascript, and are treated as first class objects by being converted into Javascript modules that load styles and markup as strings.
Pro Components are more structured and thus have more inter-compatibility
Components can be javascript, style and markup, they are bundled in a way that makes it possible to load in entire UI chunks. This means less flexibility, but the components that are available are easier to work with.
Pro Designed with ES6 modules and Web Components in mind
Component is designed as a current-day solution for the currently proposed ES6 modules and Web Components, making it more in-line with the direction the web is going in the future.
Pro Encourages simpler and smaller components
Components are encouraged by convention to be small and single-use, meaning that the packages in the community's ecosystem are easier to use and combine together. More complex components use dependency resolution to compose smaller components so that components stay limited in scope.
Pro Easy dependency management
Component provides you with a flat dependency tree. This results in easy dependency management. A flat dependency tree is important for file size optimization, so you don't end up loading multiple copies of the same library, or deeply nested dependencies that bloat up.
Cons
Con Does not store components in a registry
Volo installs components directly from urls and repositories, which makes it more susceptible to components being taken down, with fewer guarantees about their availability.
Con No longer maintained
Component is no longer being developed/maintained, so there will be no new features or bug fixes.
Con Cannot add modules that are not on Github
While using Github as a backend database for Component makes things a lot easier, as there's no need to add other authorization credentials to use modules, it means that modules that aren't on Github cannot be added.