Vite is a powerful, next-generation frontend build tool for web development. It's designed to provide a significantly improved development experience by offering instant server starts, lightning fast Hot Module Replacement (HMR), rich features including a universal plugin interface, and fully typed APIs for enhanced productivity. The tool's French-name, meaning 'fast,' underscores its emphasis on speed, a feature achieved by serving source files over native ES modules.
To use Vite, you would need to install the tool and initialize your project. First, you can install the Vite package globally to your system by running npm install -g create-vite. Once installed, you can initialize a new project by using the command create-vite my-project, where 'my-project' is the name of your new project. Then, go to your project directory by typing cd my-project, and start your development server by using the command npm run dev. Your project is now running locally and you can perform tasks such as coding and testing. Vite also provides you with a production-ready build command (npm run build) to bundle your code with Rollup, generating highly optimized static assets for deployment.
npm install -g create-vite
create-vite my-project
cd my-project
npm run dev
The full documentation for Vite is available online for consultation and learning. You can learn more about Vite's features, its plugins API, JavaScript API, and many other relevant topics at the following link: Vite Documentation.
