Understanding Frontend Bundling and Transpilation
Jul 16, 2025 am 01:20 AMPackaging is to merge multiple files into a few files to reduce the number of requests, common tools such as Webpack and Vite; translation is to convert new version code into old versions to improve compatibility, commonly used tools such as Babel; in the construction process, they are usually first translated and then packaged, and different resources are processed through the loader mechanism; in development, they should reasonably split and package, avoid over-translation, configure Polyfill, and use efficient construction tools.
In front-end development, Bundling and Transpilation are two very basic but easily overlooked links. They directly affect the project's construction efficiency, running performance, and code compatibility. Understanding these two processes will not only help you optimize the project structure, but also allow you to locate the cause faster when you encounter construction problems.

What is Bundling?
"Bundling" refers to the process of combining multiple JavaScript, CSS, or other resource files into one or several files. In early web development, each script was loaded independently, which would result in a large number of HTTP requests, affecting the page loading speed. Through packaging tools (such as Webpack, Vite, and Rollup), we can merge these files to reduce the number of requests and improve loading efficiency.
Common practices include:

- Merge all JS files into
bundle.js
- Extract CSS as a separate
.css
file - Path processing and compression of static resources such as images
The packaging tool will also handle module dependencies. For example, if you use import
to introduce another file, the packaging tool will automatically recognize and include it.
What is Transpilation?
"Transpilation" refers to code that converts code in one language to another. The most common example is to use Babel to convert ES6 code to ES5 for running in an older browser.

For example, you wrote a code like this:
const greet = (name) => console.log(`Hello, ${name}`);
After Babel translation, it may become:
var greet = function greet(name) { console.log('Hello, ' name); };
In addition to syntax conversion, Transpilation can also add Polyfill to supplement missing functions, such as Promise, Array.from, etc., so that new features can also run in old environments.
How to work together with packaging and translation?
Modern build tools often deal with both packaging and translation. Taking Webpack as an example, it will first parse the module dependencies in the entire project, then perform loader processing on each file (such as converting JS files with Babel), and finally package these processed files together.
The process is roughly as follows:
- Use
babel-loader
to translate.js
files - Compile
.scss
file usingsass-loader
- Use
file-loader
orurl-loader
to process resources such as image fonts, etc. - Final output of merged JS and CSS files
This way of division of labor and collaboration makes the construction process both flexible and efficient.
What should you pay attention to in actual development?
- Reasonable splitting and packaging : Don’t type them all into one large file. You can split them into multiple chunks according to routes or functions and load them on demand.
- Avoid over-translation : If you do not need to support IE11, you do not need to translate ES6 to ES5, so that the generated code is simpler.
- Configure Polyfill : Some libraries do not add Polyfill by default, such as React, and you need to pay attention to whether the target environment supports the required features.
- Utilize modern construction tools : like Vite, without packaging in development mode, directly use native ESM, greatly improving the development startup speed.
Basically that's it. Front-end packaging and translation seem complex, but as long as you master the basic principles, you can meet most construction needs.
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