If you're bit confused by what this is (as I was) here's a simple TLDR conversation I had with them on Twitter [1]:
> Me: Would you say Snowpack is mainly about generating ESM files (and their common code) for each import statement? Curious how that is different from webpack's code splitting strategy perhaps together with an ESM plugin
> Snowpack: Snowpack's dependency installation is a form of bundling + code-spliting: your entire dependency tree is bundled together and then split into one-file-per top-level package.
In other words: they're a code-splitting strategy where they "don't touch your code", they only look at it to find the dependencies and then they generate files (ESM modules) from the dependencies information. Then they serve that and let the (modern) browser do the rest.
> Me: Would you say Snowpack is mainly about generating ESM files (and their common code) for each import statement? Curious how that is different from webpack's code splitting strategy perhaps together with an ESM plugin
> Snowpack: Snowpack's dependency installation is a form of bundling + code-spliting: your entire dependency tree is bundled together and then split into one-file-per top-level package.
In other words: they're a code-splitting strategy where they "don't touch your code", they only look at it to find the dependencies and then they generate files (ESM modules) from the dependencies information. Then they serve that and let the (modern) browser do the rest.
Really simply idea but effective.
1. https://twitter.com/lmatteis/status/1262126825427415044