lodash-webpack-bundle-size

Simulating different approaches for code-splitting lodash.

In index.js, both lodash & lodash-es dependencies are used for simulating code-splitting with different webpack configurations.

webpack configurations

Four webpack configurations are used to see which config approach yields the best results. Each configuration is also accompanied by a webpack-bundle-analyzer-report which can be found in the dist-folder.

These are the 4 configurations:

• non optimized
• lodash babel plugin
• lodash webpack plugin
• combination of babel and webpack plugins

1. Non optimized

Only entry & output properties are used in non-optimized config.

2. Babel plugin

Only babel-plugin-lodash is used in this config with babel plugin.

3. webpack plugin

Only lodash-webpack-plugin is used in this config with webpack plugin.

4. Combination of Babel & webpack plugins

A combination of babel-plugin-lodash and lodash-webpack-plugin is used in this config with babel and webpack plugins.

Results

Config	File	Size
babel and webpack plugin	dist/babel-webpack.js	1.96 KB
babel plugin	dist/babel.js	21.90 KB
webpack plugin	dist/webpack.js	71.50 KB
non optimized	dist/non-optimized.js	79.60 KB

Warning

The configuration where both babel and webpack plugins are used, result in a staggering small bundle size. The reason why is because a lot of behind-the-scene features of lodash are removed by the lodash-webpack-plugin, which explains the big savings.

For example, lodash's get will not behave as expected if lodash-webpack-plugin is used.

Here's a full list of features that are disabled by lodash-webpack-plugin: github.com/lodash/lodash-webpack-plugin#feature-sets.

You can choose to opt-in to certain features like this:

new LodashModuleReplacementPlugin({
  collections: true,
  paths: true
});