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So the purpose here is to make it easier to use preprocessors on the backend? Hasn't this been common for a long time? What does webpack do here exactly?

• jlongster 12y ago
  A good solution hasn't been common. Try to use babel with gulp. You have to just glob a bunch of files and hope you've covered all your dependencies. It becomes a mess once you get into more complicated stuff. Webpack also handles sourcemaps flawlessly, and you get tons of other stuff like http://webpack.github.io/docs/hot-module-replacement.html http://webpack.github.io/docs/hot-module-replacement.html.
• lettertwo 12y ago
  In my experience, this approach really shines when you are building an "isomorphic" app. When the same code is expected to run in the browser and on the server, having a build tool that knows about both your entire dependency graph and your different build targets is a huge boon. For example, you get hashed filenames (for far-future cache expiration in the browser) for free (no manifests or runtime reconciliation of names to assets necessary).