Add a non-minified file in the distribution on npm

[atimmer]

In WordPress we include the FormData polyfill. We also want to ship a non-minified version. This is because when the PHP constant SCRIPT_DEBUG is enabled we use the non-minified versions of all scripts so users can inspect and debug these scripts.

Would it be possible to ship a non-minified file in the npm distribution?

Relevant issue in WordPress: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/46110

[jimmywarting]

hmm,
Using whitespace with closure-compiler is not a solution since it will not transpile es6 down to old syntax. But i saw a option for pretty print...

Would a source map be a solution also?

[jaydenseric]

It is best practice not to ship minified (or bundled) code to npm; that is best performed by the consumer in their project.

I suggest removing the build script and minified file. If the source needs to be transpiled, you can use Babel dev dependencies and setup a prepare package script. That way users can install this package as a git dependency to try out forks/PRs, etc.

[jimmywarting]

It is best practice not to ship minified (or bundled) code to npm; that is best performed by the consumer in their project.

I did that before, it ended up with ppl complaining that the polyfill didn't work in there build step - they might just have used a simple gulp script to concatenate all files without babel or something like it

I suggest removing the build script and minified file. If the source needs to be transpiled, you can use Babel dev dependencies and setup a prepare package script. That way users can install this package as a git dependency to try out forks/PRs, etc.

I'm not keen to switch to using another compiler. and ppl are probably already hot linking to github using jsdelivr so i'm not removing the minified file either - and i will keep updating the minified file for future references

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if you don't want to use the minifed version you could always include the es6 version right await
require('formdata-polyfill/FormData.js')

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Another idea maybe is to change the code to be written with es5 instead - thoughts?

[jaydenseric]

I did that before, it ended up with ppl complaining that the polyfill didn't work in there build step - they might just have used a simple gulp script to concatenate all files without babel or something like it

It sounds like you were publishing untranspiled source code. You should publish transpiled code, just don't minify (or bundle) it.

The generally accepted standard for published code used to be ES5. But best practice today is to establish a browserslist query, and let @babel/preset-env transpile the source code to your chosen level of browser support. Personally I use > 0.5%, not dead, node 6:

https://github.com/jaydenseric/extract-files/blob/v5.0.1/package.json#L35

Something else good to do is to publish native ESM in sibling .mjs files. You do all the the other transpilations except you retain the ESM syntax:

https://github.com/jaydenseric/extract-files/blob/v5.0.1/package.json#L60
https://github.com/jaydenseric/extract-files/blob/v5.0.1/babel.config.js#L7

[jimmywarting]

It sounds like you were publishing untranspiled source code. You should publish transpiled code, just don't minify (or bundle) it.

Correct - Personally I rather have a sourcemap that points to the actual part of the code rather then to some place in the transpiled place

[stale]

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