Prepack: Pipe into CLI

[bevacqua]

e.g browserify main.js | prepack | uglify

Expected: pull from standard input, push to standard output.

Actual:

Missing input file.

[InTheCloudDan]

Does anyone have a suggestion on how they would like this implemented? Pass it in as --pipe, or default the output to not have the surrounding text:

      console.log("+++++++++++++++++ Prepacked source code");
      console.log(code);
      console.log("=================");

[bevacqua]

+1 to not having surrounding text by default. imo, CLI should be:

prepack file.js
# print prepacked file as stdout

cat file.js | prepack
# print prepacked file as stdout

You could then implement the currently default behavior in user-land as:

prepack file.js > file.js

[InTheCloudDan]

@cblappert or @NTillmann any suggestion on how you would like it to be approached? I just don't want to submit something that's way off base.

[cblappert]

@sebmarkbage did a rewrite of the APIs before launch and might have an opinion on this. He's been trying to model the structure off of Babel.

[sebmarkbage]

I think the above proposal sounds good. Given that most people will want source maps I don't know how practical it is to just pipe but it does makes it easier to get started.

For large files I think we should just print them to stdout too. It's a little scary that it silently writes a file now.

Where should warnings go? Like the warning that a source map wasn't found? stderr I guess.

[bevacqua]

@sebmarkbage I think an API like this is acceptable if you want to throw in source maps:

cat file.js | prepack --source-map foo.js.map > foo.js

You could go further and add an --output option (which redirects output to a file instead of stdout) for consistency:

cat file.js | prepack \
  --output foo.js \
  --source-map foo.js.map

[gordomium]

This seems done. When should we release it?

[cblappert]

Sorry for the late response, the code for this is merged and should be included in the latest npm package.