A rule of thumb: files that end in common.js are meant for built tools, files that do not end in common.js are meant for direct browser usage.

• vue.js

  The full (compiler-included) browser build. This is the build you can just include with a script tag:

  <script src="https://unpkg.com/vue/dist/vue.js"></script>
  

  Note that this build is hard-coded to development mode.

• vue.min.js

  Same as vue.js, but minified AND is hard-coded to production mode (with runtime checks and warnings stripped).

• vue.common.js

  The full (compiler-included) CommonJS build. This is the build intended to be used with a Node-compatible bundler, e.g. Webpack or Browserify.

  The difference between the browser build and the CommonJS build is that the latter preserves the process.env.NODE_ENV check for development/production modes (defaults to development mode). This gives you more control over what mode the code should run in:

  • When bundling for the browser, you can turn on production mode by using Webpack's DefinePlugin to replace process.env.NODE_ENV with the "production" string literal:

    plugins: [
      new webpack.DefinePlugin({
        'process.env.NODE_ENV': '"production"'
      })
    ]

    This also allows minifiers to completely drop the warnings inside the conditional blocks. For Browserify, you can use envify to achieve the same.

  • When running Vue in Node.js (during server side rendering), Vue will pick up the actual process.env.NODE_ENV if set.

• vue.runtime.common.js

  The runtime-only (compiler-excluded) CommonJS build.

  This build does not support the template option, because it doesn't include the compiler. It is thus 30% lighter than the full build. However, you can still use templates in Single-File *.vue components via vue-loader or vueify, as these tools will pre-compile the templates into render functions for you.

  This is the default build you get from import Vue from 'vue' or var Vue = require('vue'). To use the full CommonJS build instead, configure Webpack via the resolve.alias option:

  resolve: {
    alias: {
      vue$: 'vue/dist/vue.common.js'
    }
  }

  For Browserify, use the aliasify transform.

• vue.runtime.js

  The runtime-only (compiler-excluded) browser build. You can also include this build with a script tag, but with this build, you will not be able to use the template option. Hard-coded to development mode.

• vue.runtime.min.js

  Same as vue.runtime.js, but minified AND hard-coded to production mode (with runtime checks and warnings stripped).