Why Brunch... And not Webpack, Grunt, or Gulp

Philosophy behind Brunch

Brunch was built with two things in mind: speed and simplicity.

You will find that the typical config of a Brunch application is an order of magnitude simpler, compared to Webpack, Grunt, or Gulp.

And that the time it takes to perform a fresh compilation? It's times faster. Even more so if you run the watcher — it will only rebuild what was changed, not everything, getting you incremental compilations in under 500ms. (Obviously, you don't have to take our word for it. See this story shared with us by a webpack user.)

In order to achieve both goals, Brunch does have to make certain assumptions about your application, and thus be opinionated. See the core concepts page for more on this.

Besides configs, brunch is also simpler in terms of commands. Grunt / Gulp commands replicate all plugins it loads. Brunch always has three commands: new, build and watch. Build / watch commands may receive optional production flag which will tell Brunch to optimize assets, javascripts and stylesheets.

You can find a more in-depth discussion of what sets Brunch apart in chapter 1 of the community-contributed guide.

Brunch vs Webpack

Webpack has been gaining quite some popularity lately. Wondering how it compares with Brunch?

Where both are similar:

• module support is first-class
• have Hot Module Replacement (hmr-brunch)
• have a notion of "compiler" / "loader" (although loaders are more than that)
• can require stylesheets

What Brunch can't do that Webpack can:

• asynchronous module loading / code splitting — brunch does have entry points functionality and can produce several js bundles though
• have clever processing of non-js/non-css assets

Unlike Webpack, Brunch:

• does not make you specify how to compile a file, every time you use it. Just add a compiler plugin and everything will Just Work™
• achieves faster build times

Brunch vs Grunt/Gulp

These are more of task runners that allow you to create custom pipelines with lots of code. Imperative.

To get first-class module support you would have to additionally configure and use Browserify or similar.

But even then, your rebuilds during watch won't be incremental — they will always start afresh and be slow.

Brunch vs Rails Asset pipeline / LiveReload / CodeKit

With Asset pipeline there are similar disadvantages. With Brunch:

• You can use any backend you like, be it Node.js, Rails or Lift. You can even keep frontend and backend as separate projects.
• You'll get automated module support
• You'll have NPM & Bower support
• Rebuilds would be fast and incremental