What is vite?

Vite is a new front-end building tool that can significantly improve the front-end development experience. It mainly consists of two parts:

• A development server that provides rich built-in features based on native ES modules, such as incredibly fast Hot Module Refresh (HMR).

• A set of build instructions that uses Rollup to package your code and is pre-configured to output highly optimized static resources for production environments.
  Vite is an ES module-based development server and build tool designed for modern front-end development. It was created for Vue 3 projects, although it can also be used in other frameworks such as React.

Vite is designed to provide a faster development experience. It implements a development model based on just-in-time compilation by taking advantage of the native module import (ES modules) feature of modern browsers. Unlike traditional packaging tools, Vite does not need to package all code into one or more bundles in the development environment. Instead, it compiles on-the-fly and provides modules on demand, which makes the startup time faster and improves the efficiency of the development process. Hot reloading is also faster and more accurate.

Here’s how Vite works:

1. Service startup: During development, you can start the Vite development server by running npm run dev or similar command.

2. Just-in-time compilation: When you access the application's entry files (such as index.html or .vue files), Vite will parse these files and compile them based on the Import relationships for just-in-time compilation. It handles the module's dependencies and compiles them into code that the browser can directly execute.

3. On-demand provision: Vite provides compiled module code on-demand based on browser requests. This means that each module can be requested and fetched independently without the need to load the entire application's code bundle. This on-demand approach reduces the loading and execution of redundant code, resulting in faster application startup.

4. Hot Reload: During development, Vite also supports Hot Module Replacement (HMR), allowing you to view and apply changes to your code in real time without refreshing the entire page. This provides a fast development experience, allowing you to quickly iterate and debug your application.

To sum up, Vite is an ES module-based development server and build tool designed to provide a faster development experience. It reduces startup time and supports fast hot reloading by just-in-time compilation and delivering modules on demand. By leveraging the native module import features of modern browsers, Vite brings a more efficient and optimized development environment to modern front-end development.