Turbopack adoption guide: Overview, examples, and alternatives

Turbopack is an advanced incremental bundler designed for JavaScript and TypeScript, developed in Rust for enhanced speed and efficiency, particularly in handling large applications. It positions itself as a successor to webpack, addressing its limitations such as slower builds and inefficient hot module replacement, and offering substantial performance improvements, including being up to 700 times faster than webpack in some scenarios. While it currently integrates seamlessly with Next.js, Turbopack aims to expand its compatibility with other frameworks like Vue and Svelte, although its ecosystem and community support are still developing compared to its predecessors. Despite its early stage, Turbopack demonstrates promising performance metrics, ease of use, and a significantly smaller bundle size, making it an appealing choice for modern JavaScript projects, particularly those using Next.js. However, for projects requiring extensive plugin ecosystems or compatibility with older browsers, alternatives like Vite or webpack might be preferred until Turbopack's public CLI and broader support are fully realized.