README.md



Explanation of Build Files


A rule of thumb: files that end in common.js are meant for built tools, files that do not end in common.js are meant for direct browser usage.


### vue.js


The full (compiler-included) browser build. This is the build you can just include with a script tag:

  <script src="https://unpkg.com/vue/dist/vue.js"></script>


Note that this build is hard-coded to development mode.


### vue.min.js


Same as vue.js, but minified AND is hard-coded to production mode (with runtime checks and warnings stripped).


### vue.common.js


The full (compiler-included) CommonJS build. This is the build intended to be used with a Node-compatible bundler, e.g. Webpack or Browserify.

The difference between the browser build and the CommonJS build is that the latter preserves the process.env.NODE_ENV check for development/production modes (defaults to development mode). This gives you more control over what mode the code should run in:


When bundling for the browser, you can turn on production mode by using Webpack's DefinePlugin to replace process.env.NODE_ENV with the "production" string literal:

plugins: [
  new webpack.DefinePlugin({
    'process.env.NODE_ENV': '"production"'
  })
]


This also allows minifiers to completely drop the warnings inside the conditional blocks. For Browserify, you can use envify to achieve the same.


When running Vue in Node.js (during server side rendering), Vue will pick up the actual process.env.NODE_ENV if set.


### vue.runtime.common.js


The runtime-only (compiler-excluded) CommonJS build.

This build does not support the template option, because it doesn't include the compiler. It is thus 30% lighter than the full build. However, you can still use templates in Single-File *.vue components via vue-loader or vueify, as these tools will pre-compile the templates into render functions for you.

This is the default build you get from import Vue from 'vue' or var Vue = require('vue'). To use the full CommonJS build instead, configure Webpack via the resolve.alias option:

  resolve: {
    alias: {
      vue$: 'vue/dist/vue.common.js'
    }
  }


For Browserify, use the aliasify transform.


### vue.runtime.js


The runtime-only (compiler-excluded) browser build. You can also include this build with a script tag, but with this build, you will not be able to use the template option. Hard-coded to development mode.


### vue.runtime.min.js


Same as vue.runtime.js, but minified AND hard-coded to production mode (with runtime checks and warnings stripped).