Hi, i read about the Google Closure Compiler and i will try to use it to make my web application better. But i think it is doing the same things like the dojo shrinksafe. Has anyone tried to use the Google Closure Compiler for a complex dojo project?
Thanks Benjamin
Closure will probably work with any valid javascript code. I fed it an extremely packed, obfuscated version of a complex Prototype project of mine and it spit out a perfectly working version. So even if your code has already been shrinked by Dojo, you can probably use Closure on top of it. You should, however, choose one of the two.
Yes, Google Closure Compiler works fine with Dojo projects. Because Closure is derived from Dojo, it has similar concepts (modules, loaders, the build, and so on) so it is potentially possible to use some advanced features of Closure Compiler with Dojo, which go beyond simple minification.
We (Dojo) will evaluate what we can reuse and leverage from Closure and how we can improve interoperability. Obviously it will include all tooling too.
As of Dojo 1.4 (not yet released, but the code is in the subversion trunk of Dojo), you can now use Closure Compiler as an option for the Dojo build process. It takes a bit of setting up. Instructions on how to use Closure Compiler with the Dojo build system.
I happen to have a 12,000 (26,000 if you include dojox/dijit imports) line dojo 1.3.2 application I am about to release.
Well I used the standard dojo build system to throw it all into one lovely big one megabyte file. Then I introduced it to the google closure compiler, the compilation went very well reducing the package down to 350 kb, 100kb less than yahoo ui, and 150kb less than shrinkwrap. I, of course, did it all in advanced mode like a man.
So far so good, then it was time to load it up! The results were mixed. The site did seem to work, but I did get quite a few pesky errors telling me that various things behind the dojo prefix could not be found. I wasn't able to work out exactly what was going on as I didn't have closure addon for firebug ready, but I didn't notice issues the actual operation of the site - though I posit if I looked hard enough I would have found them.
So I thought to myself it appears the closure compiler is renaming dojo name space in my compiled.js to make them inconsistent with dojo.js. It seemed like an ideal solution was to combine dojo.js.uncompressed.js with my blob.js.uncompressed.js using the closure compiler. This resulted in a 51kb reduction in the size of the dojo library so far so good! Bad idea dojo didn't much like this at all and refused to load! It just downloaded then just sat there in protest of google's world domination.
I have done some further research into this matter, from what I read dojo 1.4.0 does support closure in 'simple' mode, but this is rather pointless because as I read closure simple mode provides a similar amount of compression to yui.
Anyway, those are my thoughts, I have looked at closure a little, it looks like a very nice library. The css layout looks drastically simpler than dijit's, this is something I am very fond of, I've often found it easier to rewrite dijits than try and theme them correctly. It seems to be missing some elements of the dojo library I am rather fond of such as dijit._Widget, dijit. _container/contained and of course the famous dojo.declare(). I suppose I could rebuild these, but why should I?
Addition: Oh it also appears to be lacking a good RPC, cometed framework, and publish/subscriber framework. Unless I am mistaken. Don't get me wrong I want to like closure, I'm not a dojo apologist by any stretch of the imagination, I just like these parts of dojo. The addition of require and provide does make this a serious contender from my perspective. The lack of a meaningful system of this nature drove me away from jquery.