Episode 58: What’s New in Vue 3 Ecosystem: Introducing Vite 2 with Evan You

April 26, 2021Enjoy the Vue

Some exciting changes have been happening with Vite 2, and here to walk us through them is Evan You, creator of Vue.js. In this jam-packed episode, Evan talks about the decision to make Vite 2 a framework-agnostic build tool. We hear about what went into this, and Evan unpacks some of the features that come with this development. Evan talks about the enjoyment he gets from working on something new and the freedom that comes with getting to work in unchartered territory. He sheds light on what it is like building a solution like this at scale and the fact that it is never going to be a linear process, but rather an iterative one. As a former design student, Evan is comfortable working this way because he knows how to work from the top down, refining as he goes. We also dive into VitePress and VuePress and what the relationship between the two will be, Vite's pre-bundling changes and the complexities involved there, and the drawbacks of multitasking. As usual, we wrap up the show with our weekly picks, so stay tuned right till the end to hear what everyone is most excited by this week!

Key Points From This Episode:

Get to know today's guest, Evan You.
Hear what Evan’s other project, Vite, is all about and the various features it has.
The biggest change with Vite 2 is that it is now framework agnostic.
What inspired the change to make Vite 2 more framework agnostic and the benefits of the shift.
The difference between working on Vue and building a new framework-agnostic build tool.
Balancing high configurability and being overly opinionated; Vite sits somewhere in between.
How Evan keeps his finger on the pulse of other frameworks and how he's changed Vue accordingly.
Insights into Vite's new plugin system and what inspired it.
The decision-making behind drawing inspiration from Rollup's plugin.
Evan’s thoughts about Vite and Rollup plugins and what this means in the context of Vue.
Some of the ideas Evan hopes to bring back to Vue after working on Vite.
Challenges come with wide adoption, but Evan is still grateful for the active community and what they are creating.
Changes that have happened with VitePress; Evan's experience.
The current VuePress landscape and why Evan does not want VitePress to replace it.
Plans to make Vite the default way of doing things on Vue CLI; Evan weighs in.
The challenge Evan has when switching between Vue and Vite.
What Vite's development process looked like; Evan had to learn lots along the way!
When you are working on something new, with not much precedent, it is never going to be a straightforward process
You have to try to put yourself in other developers’ shoes to understand the range of issues that exist.
Plans for a Vite RFC process and what is in the pipeline on that front.
The pre-bundling changes that have happened with Vite 2 have contributed to better speed.
Deciding what to bundle: insights into Evan's thinking.
Asking the controversial question: when is Vite 2 going to be released?
Evan's thoughts on using only Composition AI and not Vuex.
Music Evan listens to while coding and where to find him online.
Alex's pick for the week: Fruity Pebbles Crisps, both delicious and horrifying!
Evan's pick for the week: Curse of the Dead Gods and Hades.
Tessa's pick for the week: So You Want to Talk About Race, Birdy the Mighty Recode, and her electronic soap dispenser.
Following up from previous picks we have talked about.

Tweetables:

“The biggest change with Vite 2 is that it's now framework agnostic, so it's not just Vue specific, it works equally well for most of the other frameworks people want to use.” — @youyuxi [0:02:56]
“With Vite, because it's a new thing, I can be as opinionated as I want. it's a new area of exploration, where I’m not confined to the existing decisions we've made.” — @youyuxi [0:08:21]
“Compared to Vue, the workload on Vite is still somewhat OK. If we build up more community members to help triage the issues, can contribute PRs, and maybe even build up some maintainers to handle the daily patch releases, that would be a good place for me, so that I can just overlook the higher-level decisions and only tune into specific decisions when I need to.” — @youyuxi [0:40:18]
“This whole process is a constant discovering new ideas, trying it out, realizing it doesn't work, and then trying something else. it's never going to be a straight-line process.” — @youyuxi [0:44:03]

Resources mentioned:

Special Guest: Evan You.

Audio Player