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Babel 6 – First Look at the New Transpiler

#babel#javascript#tooling

Babel 6 was released on 2015‑10‑29.

The team rewrote the tool into smaller, scoped packages and added presets.

Key changes

  • No single babel package. Use scoped packages instead
  • Everything is a plugin; nothing happens by default
  • Presets (like @babel/preset-env) group common plugins

Fresh setup

npm install --save-dev @babel/core @babel/cli @babel/preset-env @babel/preset-react
echo '{ "presets": ["@babel/preset-env", "@babel/preset-react"] }' > .babelrc
npx babel src --out-dir dist

Upgrade tip from Babel 5

npm uninstall babel
npm install --save-dev @babel/core

Swap the old es2015 preset for @babel/preset-env.