Have you tried using watchify [1] to speed up your builds in development? I've also been using browserify-hmr [2] which is working nicely for hot module replacement and found it easier to setup than Webpack's hmr.
I think one of Webpack's benefits is that this stuff is all bundled with it, so everyone's using it but with browserify you need to go out and find these solutions yourself
Yes, I did try watchify but encountered some major errors during usage that made me give up. I might give it another go and see if it is solved now.
Ah, it never even occurred to me to look for something like browserify-hmr, will definitely try this out!
Re:Tips and tricks in using Webpack
by 91bananas on Wednesday December 21, 2016 @12:50PM
(#13231055)
I've been running browserify under grunt and by itself, both using watchify, and I have no complaints. I came from just grunt, and a bunch of different tasks like concat, uglify, etc. Browserify has been a revelation, way faster compilation times, way less config, way fewer installed packages. Definitely give it a go again.
I really like how straight forward Browserify is. Likely this is because I am quite accustomed to Unix shell tools and makefiles (I actually use Ninja [1] with ninja-build-gen [2] for a few of my Javascript projects) but Webpack's hot-reloading would be really nice to have.
I do think it would suffice if Browserify was a bit more performant so I don't have to wait for it after making a change. I keep meaning to try Rollup to see if it will give me any advantages in that regard.
[1]: http://ninja-build.org
[2]: https://www.npmjs.com/package/ninja-build-gen