under-the-wave v1.3.9

🌊 Under the Wave

A dev server that relies on ECMAScript Modules. 🚧 WIP 🚧.

How it works

The idea is to use JavaScript modules, that were introduced in ECMAScript 2015 Language Specification and already implemented by major browsers. Using JavaScript modules we can skip a bundling step, which combines all dependant javascript files into a single one that we can run in the browser, and let browser to load all the dependant files itself on its own.

As a benefit:

• Get feedback earlier, since we don't need to wait for server to prepare initial chunk or to update existing one.
• Spend less time on a proper tooling setup.

Concerns:

• Browser will make way more network requests to load a page. However, it be addressed by HTTP/2.
• Existing packages still may use CommonJS modules, thus it takes additional effort to convert them. Good news, we do it for you 😉

Try it yourself

Install package:

npm install under-the-wave

Create index.html and use <script type=module src='..'></script> to embed modules. Use import and export keywords to declare additional dependencies and module's exports inside of module.

Start server:

under-the-wave