A comparative analysis of create-react-app (CRA) and Vite for React.js projects
Gurung, Bhabishya (2024)
2024
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2024052917558
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2024052917558
Tiivistelmä
Front-end development focuses on building the interactive component of an application that deals what a user sees and interacts with. React is a widely used front-end framework for creating interactive user interface (UI). Developers can choose from a selection of build tools to kickstart a React application. This thesis focuses on comparing the performance and community support for create-react-app (CRA) and Vite, two of the most common build tools used by developers for client-side rendering of React applications. The study aims to determine which of the build tool have a better performance, what the status of community support for each build tool is and finally to determine if Vite can be an alternative of CRA since the latter was deprecated by the React team.
The research is conducted using both qualitative as well as quantitative method. By comparing the information collected through literature review, conducting performance tests, and gathering data through survey and semi-structured interviews with developers having experience with both CRA and Vite, this thesis aims to realistically compare and evaluate both the build tools based on performance and community support. Development test and Production test are conducted to collect data regarding the building speed, development time and hot reloading time of React application built using CRA and Vite. Survey and interview were conducted to collect qualitative data regarding the support among developers for CRA and Vite.
Both the tests’ results showed build time to be four times, development time to be fifteen times and hot reloading time to be ten times faster for React application built with Vite than the application built with CRA. Data collected from survey and interviews showed most participants favoured using Vite than CRA for building React applications. The participants stated they preferred Vite as it is lighter and faster. The popularity index taken from GitHub, npm, and Google trends showed an increase in popularity for Vite compared to CRA.
The study concludes that Vite is gaining popularity among developers and is on its way to dethrone CRA as the de facto tool for building React applications. Due to Vite’s faster building and development time, more developers are switching from CRA to Vite. Although Vite does not enjoy the same level of ecosystem as CRA in terms of documentation and resources availability, with time and rapid increase in support for Vite, it might become a suitable alternative of CRA as CRA has been deprecated by the React team.
The research is conducted using both qualitative as well as quantitative method. By comparing the information collected through literature review, conducting performance tests, and gathering data through survey and semi-structured interviews with developers having experience with both CRA and Vite, this thesis aims to realistically compare and evaluate both the build tools based on performance and community support. Development test and Production test are conducted to collect data regarding the building speed, development time and hot reloading time of React application built using CRA and Vite. Survey and interview were conducted to collect qualitative data regarding the support among developers for CRA and Vite.
Both the tests’ results showed build time to be four times, development time to be fifteen times and hot reloading time to be ten times faster for React application built with Vite than the application built with CRA. Data collected from survey and interviews showed most participants favoured using Vite than CRA for building React applications. The participants stated they preferred Vite as it is lighter and faster. The popularity index taken from GitHub, npm, and Google trends showed an increase in popularity for Vite compared to CRA.
The study concludes that Vite is gaining popularity among developers and is on its way to dethrone CRA as the de facto tool for building React applications. Due to Vite’s faster building and development time, more developers are switching from CRA to Vite. Although Vite does not enjoy the same level of ecosystem as CRA in terms of documentation and resources availability, with time and rapid increase in support for Vite, it might become a suitable alternative of CRA as CRA has been deprecated by the React team.