Why webpack and babel are dependent on Node.js to run?

Question

I was learning babel and webpack and then it turns out I need to install node.js to run them both and I asked myself WHY? Then according to my research, we need node.js for webpack and babel since both of them were written in JS and to run that JS code which transpiles( for babel) and bundles up the code(for webpack). Also, another reason is that since both babel and webpack handles our JS code outside of the browser, this is the reason to use Node.js. Are these reasons true?

Please mark the answer as correct if you are satisfied. Or let me know what else is missing in it so I can add it. — hanut, Feb 01 '20 at 15:15

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 01 '20 at 15:11

According to the Node.js website -

Node.js® is a JavaScript runtime built on Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine.

Webpack and babel (along with many other tools you might use for frontend development) are written in javascript and since they are command line tools, they need a way to run outside of the browser (directly on your machine).

They could have used some other language to write the tools but since they chose to write them in javascript, Node.js is the only feasible options right now.

In case you are interested, the original creator of nodejs Ryan Dahl has built another secure runtime environment for Javascript/Typescript called Deno

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 28 '22 at 20:07

Yes, at the moment the node.js project is non-portable by full open source disclosure nor extension to port node.js commonjs without a just in time transpiler with a service worker on a server.

Definitions: FHC = "from half court"

Babel and webpack

(1) transpile/move (write&read, not ln -s sym...bolic link) & (2) compost/pile onto a JIT target,

like v8 or other browser-javascript-interpreters. v8 on a service worker can compile on the edge just in time for interpretation in a browser v8 environment but still on the cloudflare edge server.

Declare (FHC) Allegedly, rust provides webassembly modules with the lipid [llvm-]wrappings

that nucleic acid exocytosis needs to be a full-blown virus, err I mean

Initiation Routine needs to be a targetable JIT extension!

A compiler/transpiler still requires it's target-scope receivable. Declare (FHC) Emit is to execute as compile is to interpret, even AST.

Why webpack and babel are dependent on Node.js to run?

2 Answers2