On 9/30/10 4:31 PM, Maciej Jaros wrote:
At 2010-09-30 23:13, Trevor Parscal wrote:
On 9/30/10 1:55 PM, Maciej Jaros wrote:At 2010-09-30 20:35, Trevor Parscal wrote:[...]
- Where end users report platform-specific JavaScript errors, it may
be useful to be able to match the line number of the error with something meaningful.
The usefulness of this is attached to the idea the most important part of the error message is the line number. In some browsers (such as many versions of IE) the line numbers aren't even correct. Besides, as I have said already, over and over, combination is going to throw off line numbers anyways, not just making them higher, but depending on the user's preferences they may be totally different from one user to another. Line numbers in production mode (debug=false) are useless no matter how much white-space is preserved.
To my experience something is better then nothing. IE (old one that is) is usually wrong when you have either long lines (ekhem ;-)) and have code inside script tags (instead of outer files). Picture this:
1. A user says his browser reports an error. 2. I ask for the browser and other stuff... 3. I don't see the problem. 4. He tries out debug mode and it's fine. 5. I search through his code...The problem with fully minified without any vertical white space code to me is that you cannot read this. Well I can't and Firebug can't and any other debugger AFAIK. If something comes up it will be almost impossible to catch.
There's this assumption here that when a bug is reported that a JavaScript developer is going to be lost without a line number. My experience is that when bugs are reported, the first step is reproduction, and then investigation. If we shouldn't be relying on users with little or no expertise to be participating in investigation. Also, error reporting with Firebug and most browsers is much more verbose than "error on line ##".
It's not an assumption. I AM one of the main developers working on bugs reported by users on pl.wiki. And yes line number is very helpful if accurate. Also note that I was picturing a situation where I have to debug the minified code when I don't get the error in my browser(s) at hand. Usually the problem is some extension/plug-in, but I can't tell unless I investigate. And reading minified code at it's current state is impossible for me.
How can you possibly resolve an issue if you can't reproduce it? Developers have access to multiple browsers for this exact reason. Otherwise, you are debugging and programming blind, which is extremely unproductive.
I understand the need to minify code I really do. I just don't get it why do you want to minify this that much. HTML which is usually served at every page load is not minified. Further more even minified HTML can be readable for debuging purposes as every debugger (inspector) shows the structure of the code rather then a code pulp. Also why are there are explicitly added comments like "<!-- /navigation -->". People don't need comments and whitespace to read code, right? Also I have a PHP minifier if you are interested. Let's serve Mediawiki encode and if some developer want to debug the code he can always switch folders.
I think that our outgoing HTML *should* be minified, and those comments should be stripped, I just have yet to get to that as of yet. Go to www.google.com and view source. Tell me what you see. Why are we so different from them? They are taking advantage of aggressive minification, and we should too.
To be honest, I can't quite wrap my head around why I am getting any friction on making the front-end as fast as possible. I was expecting people to say I had not gone far enough.
Plus developers will probably stick to debug mode if won't provide something in the middle. Yes, I can't speak for all, but personally I work on code (small tweaks) from time to time while I'm not doing other stuff in the minute. Always changing to debug mode to debug code will not be very productive to me. That's why I wrote my loader and I was hoping that you will add some stuff from it to the loader so I can use it and so the RL can be useful to me (in non-wikimedia use cases too).
This is what debug mode is for. Developers. Developers should always use debug mode while debugging. Switching back and forth is not necessary for every tiny change, just a good thing to verify before checking in code.
Again I'm sure you are confident with your code and code of your colleagues and I'm not saying you screwed something up. I'm just saying something will eventually get screwed up just because it always does. That's why programmers are always needed isn't it ;-).
It's not a matter of me thinking our code is so good it won't break. It's a matter of wanting to send fully optimized code to clients, not partially optimized code.
This is impossible. Fully optimized code would only contain one byte per variable name. Yo need to make sacrifices. And this seems to be needed as shown before and above.
Google Closure Compiler is on the horizon, and with it, single letter names for temporary variables and functions within closures can be achieved without obfuscating the original source code. Closure can do more tricks than that, but that's a start, and usually yields 10% reductions or more depending on how verbose your naming tends to be.
I agree that something will always break - I just disagree that there's much merit in your approach to solving this.
If we are talking about allowing the ResourceLoader to be configurable with LocalSettings.php adjustments, then you are already assuming a level of expertise about the developer debugging the problem that these middle-ground approaches will be useless.
If we are talking about adding yet another URL parameter to be able to turn minification off, or otherwise customize the processing of the modules beyond turning debug on and off, I think you are adding complexity without reasonable benefit.
Well we differentiate on that. I'm wondering of what is you scenario on debugging the minified code.
Why would you want to debug code in production mode?
- Trevor
Regards, Nux.
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l