Blog
Mert Özen's blog posts on software development, backend, frontend, and DevOps.
The Rust Wave and the 2025–2026 Release Map: Rolldown, Oxc, Rspack, Turbopack, Lightning CSS and Choosing a Tool
In 2025–2026 build tools written in JavaScript were replaced by ones written in Rust and Go: Vite 8 moved to Rolldown and Oxc, the Angular CLI to Rolldown for chunk optimization, Next.js 16 to Turbopack, and Rspack 2.0 offered a webpack-compatible path. Measuring the Bookstore widget with four tools, we see Rspack ahead on the small project, Rolldown and esbuild ahead at 2000 modules, most of webpack's time spent in Terser, and we end with a decision table.
Understanding webpack: Entry, Loaders, Plugins, Module Federation and When You Still Need It in 2026
webpack treats every file as a module; loaders transform files right to left and plugins hook into the compilation. 5.112 supports CSS, HTML entries and TypeScript without loaders; Vite has replaced it in new projects, but it is still needed for old Angular builders, Module Federation and large projects tied to custom loaders. On the Bookstore widget we hit the loader-order error, write a manifest plugin and measure splitChunks' minSize limit and the cost of Module Federation.