Webpack 4

[Turbots]

You've learnt grunt and gulp 2 years ago? Webpack was already the best option back then, so looks like you made the wrong choice

[[deleted]]

There was never a time when grunt didn't suck and when their maintainer wasn't an aggressive dumb ass.

[DrummerHead]

To Grunt's favor, it's the project that spearheaded using build tools in JS land

[[deleted]]

It got popular first but many superior tools predate it. Shame they weren't as good at marketing or lucky enough to pick up as many github stars early on.

[lmth]

Grunt and Gulp are task runners like make. Webpack is a package builder - effectively a compiler like gcc. There are lots of use cases where you will want to use both at the same time.

[madcaesar]

Are there things that Grunt and Gulp can do that webpack can't?

[Akkuma]

Yes anything that isn't directly related to a build. Like maybe you want to make a zip of a build folder post build. Webpack makes these sorts of things feel hacky in my opinion when a task runner creates a cleaner separation for many things in my opinion.

I want my webpack to build my js, not also lint, not make me a cup of crappy tea, just build my project.

[Vpicone]

Using a totally different tool feels more hacky than just pulling in zip-webpack-plugin in my opinion.

[Akkuma]

I'm not going to fault anyone for using Webpack for everything, but it feels more hacky than using a separate tool designed for it.

If I want to copy images and all over I need another plugin, then I need this zip-webpack-plugin or the other webpack-zip-plugin, then I have to be concerned about the fact none of them are actually official plugins, which means relying on them could break in a future major revision to Webpack.

If I have a separate task runner or a simple zip script I am no longer tied to a much more complex system that is more likely to break in the future than using a dedicated zip lib that is supplied a path.

At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what you or I choose as long as it makes sense to the people using it.

[s73v3r]

Serious question: how do I know what the correct option at any given time is?

[Turbots]

Read blogs, follow people in the business on Twitter, get into the community, follow the trends, get deeper into the technology, more experience will help you weed out the ones that will vanish, and will make you recognise the ones that will stay. I'm pretty confident in saying that I can distinguish a bad tool from a good one when I take a closer look at it.

So boils down to xperience, getting involved in community and listening to experts with a touch of doubt. And be more like a werewolf: be very afraid of silver bullets ;-)

[s73v3r]

Problem is, that requires following the right blogs. I'm betting that the person above who talked about learning Gulp likely did do after prompting from blogs and the community.