thoughts on Javascript browserify and implicit audio context

audioContextMicroLibraries.js

/**
 * I'm trying to define a lot of Audio Micro Libs with Browserify (NPM style) and the require() mecanism
 * 
 * Our Audio Micro Libs will require an audio context to work 
 * (e.g. we will need to access the sampleRate field or use some createNode methods of the web audio context)
 * 
 * + Eventually we can use different audio context: the "main" one and/or an OfflineAudioContext 
 * which will be used to fastly compute some audio and returns audio buffer.
 */
 
// I translate that constraints by wrapping the library into a function which takes an audio context:

module.exports = function (audioContext) {
  function Lib () { /*...using audioContext...;*/ }; Lib.prototype = {/**/};
  return Lib;
}

// Now, on the user side, it turns out to be used like this:
var context = new require("audiocontext")(); // This is just a package which give a shim for window.AudioContext
var audiolib1 = require("audiolib1")(context);
var audiolib2 = require("audiolib2")(context);

// Quite cool right?

// Now, what happens if audiolib2 needs audiolib1 as a dependency?

//~ audiolib2 implementation:
var AudioLib1 = require("audiolib1");
module.exports = function (audioContext) {
  var audioLib1 = AudioLib1(audioContext); // Create the lib1 for the current audioContext
  function Lib2 () {
    // ...
  }
  return Lib2;
}

// Maybe AudioLib1 can be memoized? (see http://underscorejs.org/#memoize)
module.exports = _.memoize(function (audioContext) {
  function Lib1 () {
    // ...
  }
  return Lib1;
});

/**
 * What is your thoughts?
 * Would that work, does that make sense for you?
 * 
 * Maybe we don't have any case where a audiolib depends on another audiolib, 
 * but if we do, memoization sounds important for performance reason and also 
 * for using the same class everywhere (e.g. you want to use instanceof).
 */

If lib2 depends on lib1, I would have thought about this :

var audiolib1 = require("audiolib1")(context);
var audiolib2 = require("audiolib2")(context, audiolib1);

This way you know you have to give lib2 its dependencies and it lets you decide.

I started to read requireJS and it seems like this dependencies can be handled by requireJS. Why would we reinvent the wheel ?

I'm not, I'm more talking about the Browserify style here.

I don't really like all these closures in RequireJS..

@gre, you should leave it to npm & browserify to deduplicate audiolib1. If both main (your user program loading both modules) and audiolib2 depend on a compatible version of audiolib1 as per their version specification, npm will install modules like this:

$ ls node_modules
audiolib1
audiolib2

$ ls node_modules/audiolib2/node_modules
# Empty, because it can use the one on top

Browserify will just use that so there will only be one instance of audiolib1.

my issue is more that I want to keep the "library instanciation" for a given AudioContext (because you can create multiple audio context).

So lib2 depends on lib1 but a lib2(ctx) must use the lib1(ctx) with the same ctx which leads me to the memoize pattern.