GitPedia

Harold

Compares frontend project bundles

From funbox·Updated April 23, 2025·View on GitHub·

**Harold** is a CLI tool that compares frontend project bundles in size. The project is written primarily in JavaScript, distributed under the MIT License license, first published in 2020. Key topics include: bundle-size, parcel, rollup, web-optimization, webpack.

⛔ THIS REPO IS UNMAINTAINED

Future development moved to https://github.com/343dev/harold.

@funboxteam/harold

<img align="right" width="192" height="192" alt="Harold avatar: Sad emoji with a smile mask on a face" src="./logo.png">

npm

Harold is a CLI tool that compares frontend project bundles in size.

По-русски

Rationale

The bundle size of an average frontend project grows on every change.

To feel the pain To make it easier to measure & compare the project size while refactoring or updating the deps,
we've built Harold.

Demo

<img align="center" alt="Demo GIF" src="./demo.gif">

<small><i>The demo is accelerated. In real life setting up the dependencies and building a project takes forever.</i></small>

Installation

bash
npm install -g @funboxteam/harold

Commands

snapshot [options]

Builds the project and takes the snapshot.

Available options:

  • -o, --output <path> — sets the snapshot output path; default is harold_snapshot_<date>_<time>.json;
  • -e, --exec <cmd> — sets the building command; default is npm run build-production. The command will be run with
    NO_HASH=true env variable set;
  • -p, --path <path> — sets the path of the build result directory, which will be used for snapshotting;
    default is public.

diff <left> <right>

Compares the passed snapshots.

help

Sends halp.

FAQ

How does it work?

When you take a snapshot, Harold runs the build command, waits until the project is building, then goes to the output
directory and records the files' sizes. At the same time it creates the gzipped version of each file and records
it's size too. After than it spits the snapshot — JSON file with all the data.

Then, when you have two snapshots and run harold diff first.json second.json it compares the diff files and prints
the overall comparison.

<details> <summary>Usage example</summary>
bash
# Open your project folder $ cd ~/my-syper-kewl-project/ # Take the first snapshot $ harold snapshot -o before.json # Make some changes in the project # Take the second snapshot $ harold snapshot -o after.json # Compare them $ harold diff before.json after.json Snapshots: Left: 11/10/2020 6:30:56 PM • my-syper-kewl-project • master Right: 11/10/2020 6:45:13 PM • my-syper-kewl-project • improvement/framework-update Build time: 16 seconds slower (Left: 129 seconds, Right: 145 seconds) Diff by category: ———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— before after Changes ———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— JS 1.04 MB (270 kB) 1.12 MB (294 kB) +78.2 kB (+23.7 kB), +1 item ———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— JS (legacy) 1.07 MB (285 kB) 1.16 MB (314 kB) +90.6 kB (+28.6 kB), +1 item ———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— CSS 144 kB (23.4 kB) 144 kB (23.4 kB) No changes ———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— Images 5.26 MB (5.23 MB) 5.26 MB (5.23 MB) No changes ———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— Fonts 159 kB (159 kB) 159 kB (159 kB) No changes ———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— Videos 1.59 MB (1.58 MB) 1.59 MB (1.58 MB) No changes ———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— Other 127 kB (13.2 kB) 127 kB (13.3 kB) +364 B (+82 B) ———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— Total 9.4 MB (7.56 MB) 9.57 MB (7.61 MB) +169 kB (+52.4 kB), +2 items ———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— Diff by files: m public: +169 kB (+52.4 kB) m public/10.js: +16 B (+4 B) m public/11.js: -20 B (-3 B) + public/12.js: 301 B (143 B) m public/3.js: +1.84 kB (+621 B) m public/app.js: +4.18 kB (+843 B) m public/legacy.10.js: +42 B (+18 B) + public/legacy.12.js: 513 B (148 B) m public/legacy.3.js: +1.9 kB (+634 B) m public/legacy.app.js: +6.83 kB (+1 kB) m public/legacy.vendor.js: +81.3 kB (+26.8 kB) m public/legacy.vendor.js.LICENSE: +182 B (+41 B) m public/vendor.js: +72.2 kB (+22.1 kB) m public/vendor.js.LICENSE: +182 B (+41 B)
</details>

What is NO_HASH?

Modern frontend bundlers may add hashes to the filenames to improve caching. But Harold compares files using
their names. To improve the diff quality you should set up your bundler the way that turns off hashes when NO_HASH set.

Or you may just provide another env variable if you need:

bash
WITHOUT_CONTENTHASH=true harold snapshot

How to make a snapshot without building a project?

Pass to --exec a fake command, such as echo 1.

What is “JS (legacy)”?

Due to the variety of web browsers, nowadays frontenders have to support not only modern Chrome & Firefox, but also
old dusty IE or Presto-based Opera. To make it easier for users with modern browsers to download assets,
developers split the bundle on two parts: modern one & legacy one. The latter includes more polyfills,
contains older JS syntax, etc.

Harold expects that in the case of legacy bundle existence, its files will be named as legacy.*.js. If there are such
files, their stat will appear in “JS (legacy)” row.

Credits

The avatar for the project was made by Igor Garybaldi.

Sponsored by FunBox

Contributors

Showing top 5 contributors by commit count.

View all contributors on GitHub →

This article is auto-generated from funbox/harold via the GitHub API.Last fetched: 6/24/2026