Sesame

[Michael]

Hello,

I just wanted to update the group on the beginnings of the AMD package
manager tool we've been designing. It's been rebranded (with a nod
towards "almond") as "sesame". We've started with the user guide,
following good documentation-driven development. This can be reviewed
here:

https://github.com/micmath/ssm

I'm giving the majority of my focus to the browser-case and
JavaScript, but I intend to add support for packaging and installing
CSS assets as well.

I want to compare the ssm API to the npm API and make sure we aren't
being surprising in unnecessary ways. As for the repo and the
packaging standard, I'm quite interested in the recent proposals from
the jQuery Plugins Repository. Namely their proposal for package.json,
and the integration with github as a code host. Does anyone know how
we can join in on the discussion about these proposals?

Next steps are to nail down the API and then start writing tests.

Any early feedback on any of this is welcomed.

Best regards,
Michael

[James Burke]

On Fri, Dec 9, 2011 at 6:07 AM, Michael <mic...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I just wanted to update the group on the beginnings of the AMD package
> manager tool we've been designing. It's been rebranded (with a nod
> towards "almond") as "sesame". We've started with the user guide,
> following good documentation-driven development. This can be reviewed
> here:
>
> https://github.com/micmath/ssm

Neat.

> I'm giving the majority of my focus to the browser-case and
> JavaScript, but I intend to add support for packaging and installing
> CSS assets as well.
>
> I want to compare the ssm API to the npm API and make sure we aren't
> being surprising in unnecessary ways. As for the repo and the
> packaging standard, I'm quite interested in the recent proposals from
> the jQuery Plugins Repository. Namely their proposal for package.json,
> and the integration with github as a code host. Does anyone know how
> we can join in on the discussion about these proposals?

I believe cpm also does github repo scanning, it is worth looking at that code.

For the jQuery plugin repo, I have given feedback in this issue:

https://github.com/jquery/plugins.jquery.com/issues/2

So that repo might be where to also file anything else you want to discuss.

> Next steps are to nail down the API and then start writing tests.

I like the idea of using <script data-main="main"
src="path/to/require.js"></script>

I can see a variation of that that just builds everything, including
an AMD shim like almond into main. In that case, the above script tag
would be replaced with just

<script src="main.js"></script>

The path I have actually used so that I do not have to modify script
tags in HTML for a build, have this in the HTML:

<script src="main.js"></script>

and main.js does document.write for the require.js script tag with a
data-main="main-src", and main-src.js has all the page logic.

Another note, I have been talking a bit with the phonegap folks and
they are thinking about possibly supporting some kind of modular
development in future versions. I drew up this sketch of something
that might work in the future:

https://github.com/jrburke/sketches/blob/master/docs/phonegap.md

the "futuregap" stuff mentions a "pgm" command line app that helps set
up a phonegap project. I would expect it has overlap with the core
module services provided by a cpm or ssm, so being conscious of being
able to use the tool as a module inside another tool might be useful.

James