Dev News: Vite Rust-ifies, Roc Language, JS Framework SDKs

Vite 5 was released on Nov. 16 and is now powered by Rollup 4 — for now. Soon, the JavaScript module bundler will be replaced by Rolldown, a Rust port of Rollup with compatible APIs.

The frontend build tool Vite is embracing Rust, from moving to Rolldown in the near future to moving to a Rust core long-term. Evan You, creator of the frontend build tool, outlined the roadmap for Vite to “Rust-ify” at last month’s ViteConf 2023.

Moving to Rolldown will mean a boost in build performance, and later on in dev performance as the team moves performance sensitive parts of Vite to Rust. It will also reduce inconsistencies between dev and build, the team noted. While Rolldown is currently in early stages, the team hopes to open source the codebase before the end of the year.

Vite 5 focused on cleaning up the API by removing deprecated features, streamlining features and closing some long-standing issues, according to the release notes. Rollup 4 also provides a “big boost in build performance,” said the team.

Other changes in this release of Vite:

• CJS Node API has been depreciated;
• Vite 5 requires Node.js 18/20+. Node.js 14/16/17/19 will no longer be supported;
• server.warmup, new feature that improves startup time. “It lets you define a list of modules that should be pre-transformed as soon as the server starts,” the team added. “When using –open or server.open, Vite will also automatically warm up the entry point of your app or the provided URL to open.”

Improvements in Vite 4.3 already increased the speed to up to four times faster for a cold startup and up to two-times faster for hot model replacement (HMR).

You pointed out that Vite’s ecosystem has already expanded to include:

• Angular, which uses Vite as a deg server;
• Preact, which switched the default tooling to Vite in June;