Mvc: Bundling and minifying options discussion point

[TheBeardedLlama]

(please feel free to point me somewhere else if this is not the right place to have this conversation!)

I know I'm a bit late to the party with this one, but I'm trying to understand what options we have based on the changes in ASP.Net core.

Am I correct in saying that in _core_ the only available option is to have everything (i.e. css and js assets) precompiled and included at build time?

I have loads of follow up questions if the answer to the above is yes, but I will save on typing if this is not the right forum and/or I've got the wrong end of the stick.

[Also is there a definitive document somewhere explaining precisely how this works in _core_?]

[Eilon]

cc @madskristensen

[madskristensen]

@TheBeardedLlama The ASP.NET Core template will will be switching to use the Bundler & Minifier system instead of using Node/npm/Gulp to do bundling and minification of CSS and JS files. I just created this wiki page with more details.

You can use it today already to test it out on existing .NET Core RC2 apps. The VS extension part of the system provides a great VS experience for creating and maintaining the client assets and works on both Website projects, WAP (webforms and mvc) projects as well as .NET Core.

[TheBeardedLlama]

That sounds great @madskristensen thank you! Glad to see the back of gulp tbh ;)

I take it this is still a non runtime bundler/minifier?

Has the system that was available up until MVC5 been retired?

[Eilon]

@TheBeardedLlama yeah the system @madskristensen is talking about is used at build-time.

There are no plans at this time to bring the previous system to ASP.NET Core. I wouldn't say it's retired - it's just not available on ASP.NET Core. It works great in ASP.NET 4.x apps.

[TheBeardedLlama]

I see @Eilon, thank you for the explanation

I know it works great, that's why I'm enquiring about it ;)

May I ask if there is a reason why it's not available and there is no plan for it to be made available? Or am I poking the bear by asking that question?

[Eilon]

@TheBeardedLlama the trend right now seems to be toward using build-time systems. It's of course a trade-off. By doing it at build time, you pay the cost only at dev-time/build-time, and even there you pay the cost only when the source files change. By doing it at runtime, you avoid needing any build-time process, but you pay the cost every time the app starts up.