Sunsetting q/app-webpack and Embracing the Speed of Light: The Future of Quasar is q/app-vite only

[rstoenescu]

To our incredible Quasar community,

Since the beginning, Quasar has been about one thing: developer empowerment. We strive to give you the best possible tools to build high-performance apps without the configuration headaches. For years, @quasar/app-webpack was the engine under that hood (along with @quasar/app-vite), and it served us all incredibly well.

However, the web landscape has shifted. As we look toward the next chapter of Quasar, we have decided to officially deprecate @quasar/app-webpack in favor of a unified, Vite-centric future.

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Why We’re Making This Move

Maintaining two separate build engines is a massive undertaking. By sunsetting the Webpack-based CLI, we can pour 100% of our energy, passion, and engineering hours into making the Quasar experience on Vite the best in the industry.

With the soon to be released @quasar/app-vite v3, we’ve reached a point where the feature gap has not only closed but Vite has leaped way ahead. Frankly, Webpack has begun to feel like a bottleneck for the feature parity and kind of innovation we want to deliver.

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Why Vite Wins

If you haven’t made the switch yet from q/app-webpack to q/app-vite, here is why Vite is the undisputed champion for modern development:

• Instant Server Start: Webpack has to bundle your entire application before it can serve it. Vite leverages native ES modules, meaning it starts up almost instantly, regardless of your project size.
• Lightning-Fast HMR: Hot Module Replacement in Vite stays fast even as your project grows. You’ll see your changes reflected in the browser before you can even look away from your code.
• Built on Rolldown: Vite uses Rolldown (written in Rust) for pre-bundling dependencies, which is 10x to 100x faster than traditional JavaScript-based bundlers.
• Future-Proofing: The ecosystem has spoken. The majority of modern Vue tooling and plugins are now being built with a "Vite-first" mentality.

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What This Means for You

We aren't pulling the rug out from under you today. Here’s the roadmap:

• Maintenance Mode: @quasar/app-webpack v4 will receive critical bug fixes and security updates for the time being, but no new features will be added.
• The New Standard: All new Quasar features, performance optimizations, and official starters will be built exclusively for @quasar/app-vite.
• Migration Support: We are committed to making your transition as smooth as possible. The current documentation includes a Migration Guide. After the q/app-vite v3 release, we’ll update this docs page with a comprehensive migration guide to help you move your q/app-webpack v4 projects over to q/app-vite v3 with minimal friction.
• Documentation website: The documentation for q/app-webpack will soon move over to https://legacy-app.quasar.dev

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Looking Ahead

This isn't just about a change in tooling; it's about focus. By narrowing our scope, we can iterate faster on the Quasar CLI features you love, improve our SSR/PWA/Electron/etc capabilities, and ensure that your development workflow remains the fastest on the planet.

The "Future" isn't a destination -- it's a choice we make every day to stop doing things the old way and start doing them the better way. We can’t wait for you to feel the speed of @quasar/app-vite v3.

Thank you for being part of this journey!

[OnekO]

Deprecations are usually painful, but necessary. Quite excited about the next steps.