[ovirt-devel] Tools for developing and building oVirt.js project

[Greg Sheremeta]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Vojtech Szocs" <vszocs at redhat.com>
> To: devel at ovirt.org
> Sent: Monday, August 25, 2014 11:13:38 AM
> Subject: [ovirt-devel] Tools for developing and building oVirt.js project
> 
> Hi guys,
> 
> last week, we had "oVirt.js PoC" session and I mentioned the possibility
> of using Node.js and related tools like npm to develop & build oVirt.js
> project.
> 
> I'd like to hear your opinion - what do you think about using Node.js in
> context of developing & building JavaScript projects? (oVirt.js etc.)
> 
> Obviously, I'm strongly biased towards Node.js because of its popularity
> and therefore availability of various tools (npm packages) for JavaScript,
> for example: grunt (task runner), jslint/hint (code analyzer), uglifyjs
> (minify/compress), karma (both one-time & continuous test runner), traceur
> (es6 -> es5 compiler), etc.
> 
> My understanding is that any special-purpose JavaScript development tool
> is typically implemented as module for Node.js (due to its popularity),
> so I think it makes sense to use Node.js as a platform for JavaScript
> development.
> 
> There are also Java-based projects for JavaScript (post)processing like
> wro4j, however these tend to be implemented by invoking JS tools (like
> uglifyjs) from Java context via Rhino (JS engine for Java), for example:
> 
>   https://code.google.com/p/wro4j/source/browse/wro4j-extensions/src/main/java/ro/isdc/wro/extensions/processor/support/uglify/UglifyJs.java
> 
> (To me, developing JavaScript project with Java-centric tooling sounds
> quite strange in general.)
> 
> There's also webjars repository for hosting popular web resources for
> use in Java applications (i.e. Maven artifact for uglifyjs etc.), but
> this is just for easier dependency management from Java perspective
> (JAR file as a distribution format for web resources):
> 
>   http://www.webjars.org/
> 
> Overall, I'm in favor of using Node.js to manage all tasks related to
> JavaScript development and build process. If you have any objections
> or suggestions, I'd like to hear them!
> 
> (I understand that Node.js essentially means new dependency with all
> implications, but in this case, I think it's worth it. But this is
> just me, so please share your opinions.)
> 
> Thanks,
> Vojtech

I think most developers would agree that node.js is the tool of choice for
JavaScript development.

The thing we must carefully consider is that node.js uses its own package
manager (npm -- much like maven), and unlike maven, tooling does not yet
exist to deal with npm packages in an rpm environment.

This isn't on the same level as adding a logging library or a collections
library or something. I'd argue that dependencies don't get any heavier
than this one. That is worrisome to me.

Run 'yum list available |grep nodejs' on your machine to see which node.js
packages are available. Note that I don't see karma or uglify available in
either Fedora or Red Hat SCL (Software Collections) [1].

[1] https://sochotni.fedorapeople.org/nodejs010-RHSCL-1-RHEL-6/Server/x86_64/os/Packages/

Greg