Can I load Vue.js from a CDN in production?

Question

I chose Vue.js for a new project because it seems to run natively in the browser, as opposed to something like React that has to be compiled/transpiled via Node. Is there any reason I couldn't just link to a CDN like this in my production code?

<script src="https://unpkg.com/[email protected]"></script>

A co-worker suggested that may be for development only, and that unpkg is simply transpiling on the fly (which doesn't sound good for performance). But other than that it seems to work fine. I could also link to a more robust CDN such as this one, but just want to make sure I'm not violating some sort of best practice by not using a Node build system (e.g. webpack).

Answer 1

Is there any reason I couldn't just link to a CDN like this in my production code?

No, there is no reason not to use a CDN in production. It's even a preferred way for serving content in production mode, especially with common packages like jQuery, because most of the people would already have loaded and therefore cached this resource.

A co-worker suggested that may be for development only, and that unpkg is simply transpiling on the fly (which doesn't sound good for performance).

This is absolutely not true - that's why it is a CDN! :) It's a matter of choice, but you have to keep in mind that most of the time you should work with specific version of the library that you are using during development. If you just add the latest version of any code, you are vulnerable to all changes pushed to that repository, and so your clients will start receiving updated code, which you haven't tested yet.

Therefore fix to a specific version that you develop with, open a beer and have a good sleep :)

Answer 2

These maybe help:

<!-- development version -->
<script src="https://unpkg.com/vue"></script>

<!-- production version -->
<script src="https://unpkg.com/vue/dist/vue.min.js"></script>

And it will keep current version of Vue.js automatically.