Installation

Compatibility Note

Vue does not support IE8 and below, because it uses ECMAScript 5 features that are un-shimmable in IE8. However it supports all ECMAScript 5 compliant browsers.

Release Notes

Detailed release notes for each version are available on GitHub.

Direct <script> Include

Simply download and include with a script tag. Vue will be registered as a global variable.

Don’t use the minified version during development. You will miss out on all the nice warnings for common mistakes!

CDN

Recommended: https://unpkg.com/vue, which will reflect the latest version as soon as it is published to npm. You can also browse the source of the npm package at https://unpkg.com/vue/.

Also available on jsDelivr or cdnjs, but these two services take some time to sync so the latest release may not be available yet.

NPM

NPM is the recommended installation method when building large scale applications with Vue. It pairs nicely with module bundlers such as Webpack or Browserify. Vue also provides accompanying tools for authoring Single File Components.

# latest stable
$ npm install vue

CLI

Vue.js provides an official CLI for quickly scaffolding ambitious Single Page Applications. It provides batteries-included build setups for a modern frontend workflow. It takes only a few minutes to get up and running with hot-reload, lint-on-save, and production-ready builds:

# install vue-cli
$ npm install --global vue-cli
# create a new project using the "webpack" template
$ vue init webpack my-project
# install dependencies and go!
$ cd my-project
$ npm install
$ npm run dev

The CLI assumes prior knowledge of Node.js and the associated build tools. If you are new to Vue or front-end build tools, we strongly suggest going through the guide without any build tools before using the CLI.

Explanation of Different Builds

In the dist/ directory of the NPM package you will find many different builds of Vue.js. Here’s an overview of the difference between them:

	UMD	CommonJS	ES Module
Full	vue.js	vue.common.js	vue.esm.js
Runtime-only	vue.runtime.js	vue.runtime.common.js	vue.runtime.esm.js
Full (production)	vue.min.js	-	-
Runtime-only (production)	vue.runtime.min.js	-	-

Terms

• Full: builds that contains both the compiler and the runtime.

• Compiler: code that is responsible for compiling template strings into JavaScript render functions.

• Runtime: code that is responsible for creating Vue instances, rendering and patching virtual DOM, etc. Basically everything minus the compiler.

• UMD: UMD builds can be used directly in the browser via a <script> tag. The default file from Unpkg CDN at https://unpkg.com/vue is the Runtime + Compiler UMD build (vue.js).

• CommonJS: CommonJS builds are intended for use with older bundlers like browserify or webpack 1. The default file for these bundlers (pkg.main) is the Runtime only CommonJS build (vue.runtime.common.js).

• ES Module: ES module builds are intended for use with modern bundlers like webpack 2 or rollup. The default file for these bundlers (pkg.module) is the Runtime only ES Module build (vue.runtime.esm.js).

Runtime + Compiler vs. Runtime-only

If you need to compile templates on the fly (e.g. passing a string to the template option, or mounting to an element using its in-DOM HTML as the template), you will need the compiler and thus the full build:

// this requires the compiler
new Vue({
  template: `<div>{{ hi }}</div>`
})

// this does not
new Vue({
  render (h) {
    return h('div', this.hi)
  }
})

When using vue-loader or vueify, templates inside *.vue files are pre-compiled into JavaScript at build time. You don’t really need the compiler in the final bundle, and can therefore use the runtime-only build.

Since the runtime-only builds are roughly 30% lighter-weight than their full-build counterparts, you should use it whenever you can. If you still wish to use the full build instead, you need to configure an alias in your bundler:

Webpack

module.exports = {
  // ...
  resolve: {
    alias: {
      'vue$': 'vue/dist/vue.esm.js' // 'vue/dist/vue.common.js' for webpack 1
    }
  }
}

Rollup

const alias = require('rollup-plugin-alias')

rollup({
  // ...
  plugins: [
    alias({
      'vue': 'vue/dist/vue.esm.js'
    })
  ]
})

Browserify

Add to your project’s package.json:

{
  // ...
  "browser": {
    "vue": "vue/dist/vue.common.js"
  }
}

Development vs. Production Mode

Development/production modes are hard-coded for the UMD builds: the un-minified files are for development, and the minified files are for production.

CommonJS and ES Module builds are intended for bundlers, therefore we don’t provide minified versions for them. You will be responsible for minifying the final bundle yourself.

CommonJS and ES Module builds also preserve raw checks for process.env.NODE_ENV to determine the mode they should run in. You should use appropriate bundler configurations to replace these environment variables in order to control which mode Vue will run in. Replacing process.env.NODE_ENV with string literals also allows minifiers like UglifyJS to completely drop the development-only code blocks, reducing final file size.

Webpack

Use Webpack’s DefinePlugin:

var webpack = require('webpack')

module.exports = {
  // ...
  plugins: [
    // ...
    new webpack.DefinePlugin({
      'process.env': {
        NODE_ENV: JSON.stringify('production')
      }
    })
  ]
}

Rollup

Use rollup-plugin-replace:

const replace = require('rollup-plugin-replace')

rollup({
  // ...
  plugins: [
    replace({
      'process.env.NODE_ENV': JSON.stringify('production')
    })
  ]
}).then(...)

Browserify

Apply a global envify transform to your bundle.

NODE_ENV=production browserify -g envify -e main.js | uglifyjs -c -m > build.js

Also see Production Deployment Tips.

CSP environments

Some environments, such as Google Chrome Apps, enforce Content Security Policy (CSP), which prohibits the use of new Function() for evaluating expressions. The standalone build depends on this feature to compile templates, so is unusable in these environments.

On the other hand, the runtime-only build is fully CSP-compliant. When using the runtime-only build with Webpack + vue-loader or Browserify + vueify, your templates will be precompiled into render functions which work perfectly in CSP environments.

Dev Build

Important: the built files in GitHub’s /dist folder are only checked-in during releases. To use Vue from the latest source code on GitHub, you will have to build it yourself!

git clone https://github.com/vuejs/vue.git node_modules/vue
cd node_modules/vue
npm install
npm run build

Bower

Only UMD builds are available from Bower.

# latest stable
$ bower install vue

AMD Module Loaders

All UMD builds can be used directly as an AMD module.