Why I Switched from Webpack to Turbopack

I spent years optimizing Webpack configs, but for this project the maintenance cost kept climbing. I moved to Turbopack to reduce config overhead and speed up local feedback loops.

What improved immediately

Fast startup when opening the project
Noticeably shorter rebuild times while editing React components
Better defaults with less custom config to maintain

What I had to watch for

Some markdown and MDX plugins expect serializable config values. If a plugin setup relies on function references, it may fail in Turbopack and need string-based plugin config instead.

next.config.ts

const withMDX = createMDX({
  options: {
    remarkPlugins: ["remark-gfm"],
    rehypePlugins: [["rehype-pretty-code", { theme: "github-dark-dimmed" }]],
  },
});

Bottom line

For this codebase, Turbopack gave me a cleaner setup and faster day-to-day iteration. If your build pipeline is very customized, test plugin compatibility early.