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Introduction

Radpack

Bundlers like Webpack do a great job at providing a toolset needed to deliver an optimal out-of-the-box delivery solution for your end-users. Most loaders on the other hand, are focused on delivering only the requested assets, as they are needed, and have a much higher cacheability. Radpack fuses the best of both worlds by taking advantage of build-time bundling, with graph-based run-time loading to prevent wasteful waterfalls.

Enterprise focus

While Radpack has the potential to serve a wide area of use cases, it’s focus is on serving the neglected Enterprise space.

Description

Enterprise build plugin for end-user-optimized isomorphic just-in-time dependency loader.

Let’s break that down:

  • Enterprise
    • Multi-application dependency sharing
    • Unopinionated packaging requirements (webpack, “applets”, rollup, etc)
    • Deployments out-of-band of applications (optional)
    • Versioning
  • Build plugin
    • Optimize run-time, including dependency graphing, at build time
    • Support for webpack and rollup – more in the future
  • End-user optimized
    • End-user experience is optimized over developer experience
  • Isomorphic
    • Seamless dependency sharing between client and server
  • Just in time dependency loader
    • Load only what’s needed, when it’s needed

But let’s take a step back for a moment, and start with the basics.

Definitions

There are a few definitions that are useful to understand prior to integrating Radpack.

  • Entry - A pattern common amongst bundlers, entries are effectively named exports of the shared thing you’re exporting. Ex: myEntry: './some/path'
  • Export - In the context of Radpack, exports are simply the the things you’re exporting to be consumed/shared by others.
  • Registry - A collection of exports that may span many entries and even projects. The intention behind a registry is to provide a single source of truth (many exports) for applications to consume. The size and boundaries for a single registry should be determined by the needs of cross-application dependency usage.
  • Producer - Whoever exports a registry is a producer.
  • Consumer - Whoever bundles with a registry is a consumer.
  • Runtime - Responsible for loading a registry and the requested assets on demand.

Next

Compare radpack with bundlers and loaders.

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