About Snowpack
What is Snowpack?
Snowpack is a modern frontend build tool for faster web development. It replaces heavier, more complex bundlers like webpack or Parcel in your development workflow.
Snowpack leverages JavaScript’s native module system (known as ESM) to create a first-of-its-kind build system that never builds the same file twice. Snowpack pushes changes instantly to the browser, saving you hours of development time traditionally spent waiting around for your bundler.
Key Features
- Develop faster, with a dev server that starts up in 50ms or less.
- See changes reflected instantly in the browser.
- Integrate your favorite bundler for a production-optimized build.
- Enjoy out-of-the-box support for TypeScript, JSX, CSS Modules and more.
- Connect your favorite tools with third-party plugins.
How Snowpack Works
Snowpack is a modern, lightweight build tool for faster web development. Traditional JavaScript build tools like webpack and Parcel need to rebuild & rebundle entire chunks of your application every time you save a single file. This rebundling step introduces lag between hitting save on your changes and seeing them reflected in the browser.
Snowpack serves your application unbundled during development. Every file only needs to be built once and then is cached forever. When a file changes, Snowpack rebuilds that single file. There’s no time wasted re-bundling every change, just instant updates in the browser (made even faster via Hot-Module Replacement (HMR)). You can read more about this approach in our Snowpack 2.0 Release Post.
Snowpack’s unbundled development still supports the same bundled builds that you’re used to for production. When you go to build your application for production, you can plug in your favorite bundler via an official Snowpack plugin for Webpack or Rollup (coming soon). With Snowpack already handling your build, there’s no complex bundler config required.
Snowpack gets you the best of both worlds: fast, unbundled development with optimized performance in your bundled production builds.
