create react app + preact = 💖

Love the CRA bootstrap? Hate big bundle sizes?

npm i -D cra-preact
# or
yarn add --dev cra-preact

Write your code as if you weren't using preact, continue importing react.

usage

Replace your build, start and test scripts

"scripts": {
- "start": "react-scripts start",
- "build": "react-scripts build",
- "test": "react-scripts test",
+ "start": "cra-preact start",
+ "build": "cra-preact build",
+ "test": "cra-preact test",
  "eject": "react-scripts eject"
}

Cool, done. Now watch the bundle size go down.

bundle size drop porn

initial CRA bootstrap

medium size real-world production project

disclaimer

While rare, problems may occur.

• Please be aware that cra-preact is using preact's compatibility layer (preact/compat) and issues with it should be directed to preact's repo
• Make sure to develop and test with cra-preact to catch incompatibilities during development
• This project requires react-scripts v3+
• It is NOT recommended to plug this into existing projects just as a build script. Incompatibilities will most likely surface during runtime, not compile time
• Because it relies on fine details in react-scripts any minor upgrade of it might be a breaking change for cra-preact
• While it works with npm, there are no tests available for npm. Because npm link and npm install don't respect peer dependencies

---

This whole project was inspired by this github comment.