require-ideal-js

requireideal.md

There's so many things wrong with the world of script loading today. I want an easy way to:

• install locally scripts and their dependencies
• load these scripts from my application

I want it to:

• work readily with almost all existing projects, source that does not use the script loader
• handle versioning
• have as few configs as possible
• work ok with a JMVC style directory structure
• avoid loading duplicate versions at all costs (a big difference with npm)

How?

Consider a grid widget that depends on jQuery UI, CanJS, and jquerypp

define('project/supergrid(1.0)',['jqueryui(>= 1.8)/positionable',
                         'jquerypp(>= 1.0)/event/resize',
                         'underscore(1.3.3)',
                         'can(>= 1.0)/control'], function(pos,resize, _, control){

})

Registry:

{
   jquery : "http://code.jquery.com/jquery-{}.js",
   can : "https://github.com/jupiterjs/canjs/zipball/v{}",
   underscore: "https://github.com/documentcloud/underscore/zipball/{1.3.3}"
}

Installing

With just project/supergrid.js defined as above run:

X install project/supergrid.js

problem whole zipped project must be downloaded to figure out dependencies. Not sure which version however.

Questions:

1. Is it possible to register a CDN that would work with this so things don't have to be local

2. What would the registry look like?

   jquery : "http://code.jquery.com/jquery-{}.js"

3. How would it know the version it has w/o a config?

   It would just go to 'jquery' and use that. You would get a warning if version doesn't work.

   How do you manage needing 2 versions? - config!

4. How would can declare it's version?

   define("can(1.0") // in can/main.js or can/can.js
   

Scenarios

Directory style

I really like:

control\
  control.js
  control_test.js
  control.html (demo page)

This is how I encourage everyone to develop, with self-contained modules for testing, experimentation, etc. This is just steal('control'). With no .js, steal just copies the last part and adds it again. I know I'm alone on this and it's now how most people organize their projects, but most people are wrong.