When comparing JSHint vs Webpack, the Slant community recommends Webpack for most people. In the question“What are the best tools for front-end JavaScript development?” Webpack is ranked 3rd while JSHint is ranked 7th. 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 Customizable ruleset
Since it's creation, JSHint was created to be a more configurable version of JSLint (it's actually a fork of JSLint itself). Every rule is configurable through a configuration file.
Pro Comes with support for many librariers
JSHint supports libraries like QUnit, NodeJS, jQuery, Mocha out of the box.
Pro Basic ES6 support
Basic ES6 support is included.
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
Cons
Con No way to support ESnext
There's no support for ESnext available.
Con Difficult to know which rule is causing an error
Because it does not display the rule name that is being broken, it's difficult to know which rule is actually causing the error.
Con Config file may be hard to understand
Due to a somewhat hard to grasp syntax, configuring Webpack may take some time.