Vite

Vite is a frontend build tool, created by Evan You, that makes local development fast by serving source files as native ES modules instead of bundling the whole application first. When the dev server starts it does not build the project; the browser requests modules and Vite transforms them on demand, so startup stays quick regardless of project size. Hot module replacement updates only the changed module, so edits appear almost immediately while component state is preserved. Dependencies are pre-bundled with esbuild, which is written in Go and much faster than JavaScript-based bundlers. For production, Vite bundles with Rollup, applying code splitting, tree shaking, and asset hashing, since shipping thousands of unbundled module requests would be slow over a network. It supports TypeScript, JSX, CSS modules, and PostCSS out of the box, and a Rollup-compatible plugin API covers the rest. Vite has become the default tooling for Vue, SvelteKit, Astro, Nuxt, and Remix, and Vitest reuses its configuration for tests. The main friction when migrating from Webpack is ecosystem-specific: projects depending on Webpack-only loaders or plugins need replacements, and the difference between the esbuild dev path and the Rollup production build can surface bugs only at build time.