Webpack v2 is officially released

The article says version 2.2. Is the headline wrong, or is there some kind of weird back story in which versions 2.0 and 2.1 met some strange fate preventing them from being "officially released"?

The headline is not wrong, it is 2.2.0.

The reason is there was apparently an earlier attempt some time ago to release a v2, but it didn't go through at the time: https://twitter.com/TheLarkInn/status/821451320137748481

Can anyone suggest a good resource for getting started with webpack? I've tried messing around with it before in the past and never figured it out.

Sure! webpack.js.org/concepts

Any improvements coming for faster hoy module reloading? I get 2s + most of the time

Try tweaking your source map configuration

Any big reason to upgrade?

They added support for lazy loading React modules. Helpful for large SPA-style apps. https://webpack.js.org/guides/lazy-load-react/

Tree shaking is a big one. A big pain-point with large libraries like React-Bootstrap and React-Router is that if you're not careful you can end up importing a bunch of stuff you don't want.