Vite

Vite is an open-source build tool and development server for modern web applications. It was created by Evan You and released in 2020, initially gaining prominence within the Vue.js community. The project is framework-agnostic, offering first-class support for Vue and good compatibility with other frameworks through plugins.

In development, Vite serves source files over native JavaScript modules in the browser, which allows a fast startup and on-demand file processing. Hot module replacement updates modules in place without a full page reload, providing quick feedback during development. To reduce cold-start times, Vite performs dependency pre-bundling using esbuild, and it uses esbuild for fast transformation of TypeScript, JSX, and other assets.

For production builds, Vite relies on Rollup to bundle the app, enabling optimizations such as tree-shaking, minification, and efficient asset output. This combination aims to deliver fast development experience with reliable, optimized production output. Vite also supports a wide range of features common to modern front-end workflows, including support for TypeScript, CSS and PostCSS, CSS modules, pre-processors, environment variables, and extensible configuration through a plugin system.

Architecture and ecosystem: Vite exposes a plugin API that encourages extensibility and interoperability with the broader tooling ecosystem. It provides first-class Vue support via a dedicated plugin and offers compatibility avenues for other frameworks through respective plugins. The project has a growing ecosystem of plugins for features such as server-side rendering, testing, and various framework integrations, contributing to its adoption in diverse web development projects.

Overall, Vite is positioned as a fast, modern alternative to traditional bundlers, emphasizing speed in development and efficiency in production.