It would be odd to me to describe webpack as "shaping up against" Brunch. Brunch is basically niche by comparison – by # of installs, webpack is roughly 172X mo

It would be odd to me to describe webpack as "shaping up against" Brunch. Brunch is basically niche by comparison – by # of installs, webpack is roughly 172X more popular. webpack not only has more features, but I wouldn't expect Brunch to be much faster even before webpack 4. Just a guess though.