The final release of webpack 2, the popular JavaScript module and asset bundler, has arrived, bringing with it native support for ES2015 and vastly improved documentation. However, it’s too early to tell if the new version will dramatically improve build times and file sizes.
Webpack 2 (officially version 2.2) includes a number of changes intended to make using it much easier. One of the most welcome upgrades is the new documentation. For example, the version 2 docs include an entire section dedicated to explaining the core concepts such as loaders, plugins, and configuration in more detail than the 1.x documentation did. This should reduce the time it takes a newcomer to get up to speed and the team is taking documentation very seriously.
Webpack documentation coordinator, Juho Vepsäläinen, said that new documentation was essential to the success of version 2:
The [1.0] documentation is great if you already understand webpack. But if you are just starting to delve into the tool, it’s a less-than-desirable experience. In order to make webpack both more approachable and usable, we decided to redevelop the documentation.
For developers using version 1.x who want to switch to 2.
