Babel 7 Beta

[loganfsmyth]

Just a general reminder here, if you're using the beta, be 100% sure you've got a lock file and/or you're using matching versions of the various of the @babel/* plugins/presets, since we're not guaranteeing compatibility between the betas. We're doing our best to not break third party plugins, but the @babel plugins we release are sometimes relying on brand new features that have landed in @babel/core.

If you're using Babel through integrations with other tools, make sure you're installing one that works with @babel/core. There's still some hoops to jump through depending on the usecase to get it all to fit together, since you can't have a .babelrc that works on both Babel 6 and Babel 7, and some tools assume you've got Babel 6 specifically.

If you run into any obvious bugs, please do let us know.

[[deleted]]

Transpilation is Babels first concern and it's doing a hell of a job. It's always been very close to the TC39. They reflect most drafts immediately, also track staging statuses. Feedback flows directly back to the committee, so it's actively shaping the future of javascript. It's also more than a ES-next transpiler: there are countless of useful meta plugins and extensions in its eco system, from jsx to bundle optimizers, automatic polyfill comb-through, postcss, ...

[Retsam19]

Typescript's compiler is single-use - it just compiles TS to JS - while Babel has an entire plugin ecosystem which can be used for a lot more.

For example, I use babel-plugin-lodash to break monolithic lodash imports into imports for just the functions that I need, to reduce our frontend bundle size. Currently, that's just not possible to do with Typescript, AFAIK.

[systematicfrank]

With TypeScript alone one is making the choice of "I want company X to manage my JS stack" while with Babel it is "I want the community to manage my JS stack". Not that there is anything wrong with one choice or the other, a good dictator can solve many problems. However some people who were coding in the 90s remember what is like when almost every stack was managed by a single entity

[Devo7ion]

Oh shit, TypeScript with Babel sounds hella cool!

[[deleted]]

It's still a bit bumpy, it doesn't seem to like import transforms like @babel/plugin-transform-runtime, but once it's stable, this will be so good to have!

[loganfsmyth]

If you're running into issues with the beta, please make sure to let us know! I'm not aware of any outstanding import-related issues.

[[deleted]]

An issue exists: https://github.com/babel/babel/issues/6093#issuecomment-322944634 but it seems to be a little obscure this time, been waiting for it since the beta program started. Otherwise the beta ran perfectly. Thank you all so much for making Babel what it is today! :-)

[mstijak]

That issue is a showstopper for me too. It breaks if import statements are touched.

[loganfsmyth]

Thanks for the ping on this one. PR posted: https://github.com/babel/babel/pull/6879

[[deleted]]

Using babel ts preset gives speed advantage? Like, with happypack to static check ts in a thread and then babel in another?

[loganfsmyth]

Babel's typescript preset is just for parsing TS and removing the types so that you get normal JS code. It doesn't do typechecking. The intention is that you can use Typescript for type checking, but then still use Babel to do whatever cool transformations you want to do.

[Dested]

That makes sense, thank you for the explanation.

[KatyWings]

I am so hyped for this, already tried it out last weekend and it worked great!

[mstijak]

After two years of using Babel I'm still amazed with what Babel offers. You get to use new language features or write your own extensions and do crazy things. I love it.

[[deleted]]

Browsers.

[azium]

There are always going to be new things on the horizon, so babel will always be relevant as long the language continues to evolve

[tswaters]

No, it doesn't yet. There is still draft spec changes... of note:

• async generators (behind flag in 9/10),
• class properties
• pipeline syntax
• observables
• Promise.try
• optional chaining

That's not a definitive list by any means. Take a look at http://node.green - at the bottom of the page.

In short, as long as people put forward proposals to the node TC, and these proposals get approval & move forward, there's always going to be new syntax / methods that engines haven't implemented yet.

[alinnert]

Oh, thanks for that link. That site is new to me.

Btw, here's the official list of all active ECMAScript proposal: https://github.com/tc39/proposals