On 05/22/2010 04:36 AM, Michael Dale wrote:
Preserving new-lines is a marginal error accessibility gain when your grouping many scripts, replacing all the comments with new lines, striping debug lines, and potentially shortening local scope variable names. Once you are going to "fix" an issue you will be fixing it in the "actual" code not the minified output, so you will need to recreate the bug with the non-minified output.
The gain would be that most browsers only report the filename (URL) and line number where a JavaScript error occurs. If you group all your scripts into one file with one line, you basically lose _all_ information about _where_ the error happens.
But I do think that the debug mode you added in r66703 is probably an adequate substitute, since, as you note, any bug that only occurs in the combined and minified code counts as a bug in the minifier. At least as long as we actually have people able and willing to promptly fix any such bugs (including any regressions triggered by old/unusual browsers and custom user scripts) ASAP when they're found.