I wouldn't mind a build tool if it didn't require a ton of JavaScript files (looking at you Babel.js).

Recently I had to start a new project and decided to use Go for the back-end and Vue.js for the front-end, but I was concerned about all the tooling that I would need to integrate just to power the front-end side of the website. More so considering that my employer's business has nothing to do with web development so all this overhead would be unjustifiable. I spent several days reading and trying to understand what every tool included by Babel.js was doing until I gave up after the +20th module. It felt like a nightmare to see the gigantic dependency tree inside the "node_modules" folder.

I felt relieved when I found that Vue.js Components don't need to be compiled [1].

I also found this article interesting [2] with information on different approaches.

This is what I ended up with (my own design):

    /project/
    ├── docker-compose.yml
    ├── Dockerfile
    ├── README.md
    ├── backend
    │   ├── about.go
    │   ├── app.go
    │   ├── home.go
    │   ├── main.go
    └── frontend
        ├── public
        │   ├── app.min.js
        │   ├── bootstrap.min.css
        │   ├── favicon.ico
        │   ├── about.min.js
        │   ├── styles.min.css
        │   ├── vue.min.js
        │   └── vue-res.min.js
        └── views
            ├── base.html.tpl
            ├── home.html.tpl
            └── about.html.tpl

Where "app.min.js" contains the basic Vue.js options like this:

    var Application = function() {};
    Application.prototype.el = '#app';
    Application.prototype.delimiters = ['${', '}'];
    Application.prototype.data = {};
    Application.prototype.created = function() {};
    Application.prototype.methods = {};

And the sub-sequent pages, like "About", load a JavaScript file with this:

    Vue.component('about', {
        template: '#about',
        data: function() {
            return {…};
        },
        methods: {…}
    });

[1] https://vuejs.org/v2/guide/components.html

[2] https://medium.com/js-dojo/7-ways-to-define-a-component-temp...