Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
146 lines (111 loc) · 6.09 KB

conversion-guide.md

File metadata and controls

146 lines (111 loc) · 6.09 KB

Conversion Guide

This guide explains how to convert a project using .coffee files to JavaScript using decaffeinate.

Assumptions

This guide assumes a few things:

  1. You have Node v4 or higher installed.
  2. You have a project or set of files that currently compile using the official CoffeeScript compiler.
  3. Your project is able to run ES2016 code. In particular, depending on what browsers/runtimes you need to support, you may need to set up Babel, including standard library polyfills like Array.prototype.includes.
  4. You understand CoffeeScript, ES6, and the files being converted reasonably well.
  5. You are using Linux, macOS, or a compatible OS and are comfortable using the command line. This may work on Windows with some adjustments.

Note that if you cannot or prefer not to install Node, or otherwise cannot or prefer not to run commands on the command line, you can use the decaffeinate repl to do the conversion. This guide assumes that you are using the command line.

Getting Started

For this guide, we'll use the bulk-decaffeinate tool, but you can also run the decaffeinate CLI directly if you prefer.

First, install all dependencies:

$ npm install -g bulk-decaffeinate decaffeinate eslint

Run decaffeinate on your codebase to see if any files have problems being converted:

$ bulk-decaffeinate check

If there are any failures, a file called decaffeinate-errors.log will have information about all failures.

Converting one file

Pick a file to convert first. Ideally it should be simple, and one that you understand. Then run this:

$ bulk-decaffeinate convert -f path/to/your/file.coffee

This will generate three commits that convert that file to JavaScript.

In some cases, the conversion may fail. If this happens, you can often make a modification to the CoffeeScript file so that decaffeinate can convert it. To help with this, try pasting the code into the repl and tweaking the CoffeeScript code until it can be converted. Also feel free to file a bug on the issues page if you run into a bug.

Sanity-check the JavaScript

Compare your new .js file against your .coffee file. Does the conversion seem correct? Is there anything that was done incorrectly? Or perhaps there are simply a few things that worked well in CoffeeScript but don't work as well in JavaScript.

For a comprehensive list of things to keep in mind when looking over the JavaScript output, see Cleanup suggestions after running decaffeinate.

Run your tests

You have tests, right? The best way to ensure that the conversion went smoothly is to run your test suite. Since decaffeinate generates code with syntax from future versions of JavaScript, you may need to use a tool like babel to compile the code for use in the environments you care about (i.e. Node, browsers, etc). If so, set up your build system to convert the new .js file to runnable JavaScript.

Hopefully, running your tests will show that everything works as expected. If not, consider creating a new issue if you believe that decaffeinate is generating incorrect code.

Converting a whole project

The bulk-decaffeinate tool allows you to pick how much code you convert at once. See the README for more details on configuration.

Before running decaffeinate all at once on your code, you should think about what conversion strategy makes the most sense in your case. Here are some questions you should ask yourself:

  • How much risk can you accept? If your CoffeeScript project is a small side project that is not used in production, it may be fine to run decaffeinate all at once. If your project is used in production in an environment where bugs are costly, you'll likely want to spread out the conversion slowly over time. Also, you may prefer to use some of the --loose options if occasional bugs are acceptable in your case.
  • How good is your test coverage? More tests means you can be more confident converting larger batches of code at once and enabling more --loose options.
  • Are you happy with the style of the generated code? bulk-decaffeinate automatically runs eslint --fix, so one way to ensure style consistency in simple cases is to configure eslint for your preferred style. In more complicated cases, you may want to write custom code transforms for your use case. bulk-decaffeinate can be configured to run custom jscodeshift scripts as part of the conversion process.
  • Are you already using JavaScript for some files? If not, you may want to avoid jumping in too quickly. Especially if you're working on a team, you may want to first think through JavaScript best practices for your codebase, so that your team can be consistent once your code is in JavaScript.
  • Do you have buy-in from your team? If you need to convince others on your team that decaffeinate is a good idea, you may want to convert a small area of code as a proof of concept first.
  • Why are you using decaffeinate? For example, if your goal is to simplify your build tooling, you may want to convert your codebase in an automated way without worrying as much about the resulting code style. If you want to avoid having to teach CoffeeScript to new team members, you may want to prioritize the most actively developed code and spend time manually fixing any style issues in the converted code.

A note about file history

You may notice that bulk-decaffeinate generates multiple commits instead of just one. In particular, it renames the file in one commit and changes the contents in a separate commit. This allows git to properly track file history across the conversion.

For example, once you've converted your file, you can run git log --follow -- path/to/file.js and see the history of the .coffee file too.