Installation

Make sure latest node.js installed and npm updated.

Init package.json:

npm init -y

Install babel:

npm install --save-dev babel-cli babel-preset-env

Install polyfill:

npm install --save babel-polyfill

Configure

Create .babelrc:

{
  "presets": ["env"]
}

Add entry to scripts section of package.json file:

"babel": "babel src -d dist"

Create html and js

Create src folder for source files and dist for transpiled output.

Create file src/index.js written in ES2015:

const greetings = `Hello World!`;
document.body.innerHTML += greetings;

Create index.html:

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta name="viewport"
          content="width=device-width, user-scalable=no, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, minimum-scale=1.0">
    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="ie=edge">
    <title>Babel Sample</title>
</head>
<body>
    <script src="node_modules/babel-polyfill/dist/polyfill.min.js"></script>
    <script src="dist/index.js"></script>
</body>
</html>

Run babel

npm run babel

Load webpage

Open index.html and see output

Debug

Open debugger (Ctrl-Shift-I in Chrome) and navigate to source code, inspect output

Adding source maps

Modify entry in scripts section of package.json file to produce source maps:

"babel": "babel src -d dist -s"

Watching source files

Modify entry in scripts section of package.json file to watch for changes:

"babel": "babel src -d dist -w"