This cheatsheet covers esbuild 0.28.x, the current stable line as of mid-2026 . It is scoped to the decisions you make mid-build: the CLI flags, the API entry points, the plugin hooks, the loader mappings, and the incremental lifecycle. The version numbers matter less than the shape of the tool, but the shape has settled,…
The three tools are not interchangeable, and the comparison only makes sense once the category is clear. esbuild is a bundler and a transformer. Rolldown is a bundler. SWC is a compiler and a minifier that can also bundle, but its primary identity is the transform layer that other tools consume. The overlap is in…
The package.json scripts section is the entry point for every esbuild build, and the choice between the CLI and the JavaScript API is the first decision. The CLI is a one-liner that maps the flags to the build options. The JavaScript API is a module that runs the build programmatically and returns a result object….
This cheatsheet covers Vite 8 (Rolldown-powered) with the Environment API, advanced chunking, Oxc transforms, and the experimental Bundled Dev Mode. It is scoped to the decisions you make mid-build, not to every option in the config. The Core Shift in Vite 8 Vite 8 replaced esbuild + Rollup with Rolldown (Rust bundler) and Oxc (Rust…
Vite’s unbundled dev server was the experiment that made it fast. For years, the pitch was simple: the browser requests modules on demand over native ESM, and the dev server transforms each file as it is requested. The approach worked because it avoided the upfront cost of bundling the entire application before the first page…
Vite builds a static site. The vite build command produces a dist/ directory containing index.html, the hashed JavaScript and CSS assets, and any files copied from the public/ directory. The deployment is the process of serving that directory from a static host, and the SPA routing rule is the configuration that makes client-side routing work…
Vite’s bundle output is not a single number. It is a set of chunks, each with its own raw size, its own gzipped size, and its own role in the application’s load sequence. The audit is the discipline of reading that set: which chunks are on the critical path, which are lazy-loaded, which are duplicated,…
The migration from Webpack to Vite is not a configuration translation. It is a change in the development model. Webpack bundles the entire dependency graph before the browser loads anything. Vite serves the source files as native ES modules and lets the browser request them on demand, pre-bundling only the dependencies that need transformation ….
Vite does not have a native concept of a monorepo. It resolves modules the same way it resolves them in a single-package project, and the package manager—npm, yarn, or pnpm—is what creates the links between the workspace packages. The friction appears when Vite encounters a linked package that is not published to a registry and…
Vite’s React Server Components support is not a framework. It is a plugin that uses the Environment API to provide the low-level primitives that a React framework can build on. The @vitejs/plugin-rsc package is that plugin, and its role is to split the build into three environments—rsc, ssr, and client—and to provide the runtime adapters…