+1 for parceljs
+1 for parceljs
I am still thinking: why do a PHP framework like Yii need something like that?? 
It already features a more than capable asset manager, with asset bundles and whatever we need; unless we are managing the assets ourselves.
I am so happy that I am not on the JS train 
My point is: is it really a concern of Yii if you choose to build your frontend wholly with JS? Because thatās the only reason why youād need a JS bundler.
Iāll take a look, thanks 
Neither Rollup nor Parcel have downloads anywhere near what Webpack has.
Itās not so much a trend like React, Angular, or Vue. Itās a build tool, like Parcel and Rollup, it just depends on which one the people working on the project want to use. The point is to take separate source files of different concerns and abstraction layers and make one or more files that can be ran in the browser. Thatās not something that will likely go away anytime soon given the nature of JavaScript. The other option would be to make everything in one big JS file and thatās clearly not the direction the web is going for performance reasons.
The difference with Parcel is that it uses an HTML file as the entry point. The Parcel command is parcel index.html. Which means it requires a static HTML file, and thatās clearly not applicable here. Rollup could be another option, but I havenāt worked with it and I feel Webpack is more comprehensive and flexible (and given the overwhelming usage of it, Iād say others agree). Not to mention itās part of the JavaScript Foundation group, https://webpack.js.org/. Also the JS Foundation and Node.JS Foundation plan to merge https://js.foundation/blog/2018/11/27/node-js-foundation-and-js-foundation-intent-to-merge-update-november-2018.
So in terms of support Webpack is the more stable bundler to use.
Also @jacmoe the point isnāt about building the whole front end in JS. Itās about building whatever amount of JS that includes only the JS from Yii that the developer needs.
If I want to do my own validation and use Yiiās validators I shouldnāt have to load the entire Yii JS file for a few things to validate a field on the page. That adds unnecessary overhead. The options as I see it is to either structure the JS they have in a maintainable way that allows the developers using it to only use what they need, or remove all of the JS that isnāt part of the debugging/file generation process (even then it should be well structured and easily maintainable, i.e. not big source files).
For now ā certainly. A few years ago bower, gulp and grunt were a thing. Previously it was jQuery. I wonāt be that sure what weāll see next year.
Yii scripts are clearly divided. Validation is in its own file. When weāve implemented Stay project weāve used gulp to build our assets and for package sources weāve referenced files from vendor. I donāt see a reason why it cannot be done with webpack or any other bundler without specifically supporting/preferring that workflow.
yii.validation.js is 15.4 Kb.
Thatās not a lot 
I do understand the rationale between webpack and friends. And people are free to use them.
I just donāt think they are relevant to Yii. In my humble opinion.
Iām sure I would love to have Yii widgets (forms and inputs) implementing client side functionalities using light-weight plain vanilla javascript.
Keep in mind those are all apples and oranges. Bower is a package manager, Gulp and Grunt are task managers, and jQuery is a library. I believe it would be a misrepresentation to compare them to each other or to Webpack. The difference between Webpack and Gulp is quite different.
Bower is built on top of Node and npm, like Yarn. It makes sense that they would eventually die off. Node and npm can now do most or all of what they do/did and keeps getting better.
Task managers were and still are used to make chaining things together in Node, but with the right set up Webpack + npm scripts can chain things together. Say for example in Webpack you import a Sass file, you can have Webpack use the sass-loader, postcss-loader, css-loader, and file-loader to export a processed CSS file. Thereās nothing saying that these tools canāt be used in the same project, though. Like I said above, they serve different purposes.
Gulp just concatenates files, Bundlers rely on import and export statements either through CommonJS or ESM. Gulp doesnāt resolve the dependency files that another file might use. Which means obviously youād have to have the file be in the array of files to concatenate.
Like I said above, with a task you can achieve āsomeā of what a bundler can do, but you have to patch it together yourself and you donāt get the full benefit/functionality a bundler.
The decline of jQuery is natural progression as well. jQuery made it easier to work across different browsers. As the browsers adopt more standards (unfortunately by just jumping on the Chromium train) jQueryās purpose declines. It also started to decline with the rise of Node and frameworks and libraries such as Angular, Vue, and React. Iāll note that those also have a different purpose than jQuery.
Using Webpack, Browserify, Rollup, or any of the bundlers allows for better structure. Since you can import dependencies in the file that needs them, then package all of that together for the browser.
One could argue that bundlers will be moot in 5-10yrs when all browsers have an implementation for the import and export statements. However, the browser would have to resolve and load all of the dependencies at run time and if you have a big application that load time for each individual file would be costly.
@softark It does export plain, vanillia JavaScript, though. Webpack does add a little overhead with itās bootstrapping functions, something like ~4k bytes. Iād say itās negligible given the overall benefit. Iām not sure about Rollup or Browserify.
The two languages I work with the most PHP, and JS (a lot of JS). So Iām definitely a proponent of better structure.
It was noted that the validation file is only ~15k bytes, thatās great. Thatās quite small. For Yii alone it possibly would be considered overkill. However, Yii is used in larger projects. I donāt see why developers shouldnāt be able to leverage importing Yii into their own files.
Ultimately itās up to you guys, the contributors and collaborators, about what you want to do. I can simply offer my suggestions.
Seriously, we know what Gulp, Webpack, Bower, Yarn and the other things are and what they do
What prevents you from using Webpack right now?
Thatās great that you know already, but they were being compared. Soā¦ I explained the apples and oranges to point out that they canāt be compared.
Nothing is stopping me from using Webpack, I do use Webpack. My point is being able to use Yiiās JS assets in a projectās JS assets instead of loading a separate file which has itās own load time and includes more than may be needed for that page, even if the file is ~15kb.
I did that before, with Gulp and Gulp plugins, but now I just tend to let Yii load what it needs via the AssetManager (which only loads whatever when it needs to be loaded), because Iāve learned that having many requests is now better for performance than concatenating/combining resources. In fact, splitting up is now a recommended practice.
Could you explain to me how Yii should incorporate Webpack? It is very unclear to me what benefits it presents, or how it could be done?
This idea seems to go well with the concept of Yii 3 which is split into core pieces with minimum dependency.