#QxCompiler
QxCompiler is a compiler for Qooxdoo (http://qooxdoo.org) applications, written in Node.JS Javascript it adds these key improvements over the standard python generator:
- Includes Babel for adding ES6 to all Qooxdoo applications
- Fast (up to 24x faster) and low resource usage (tiny cache, low CPU usage)
- Backward compatible with existing Qooxdoo apps (you can use it out-of-the-box, no changes to your code required)
- Written in 100% Javascript
- API based, easily extended and with dependency information available at runtime
NOTE While QxCompiler is backward compatible with generate.py and does not require changes to your code, ES6 support requires that strict mode is enabled and this can introduce a few minor compatibility issues; also, QxCompiler uses a new trick for managing dependencies and for both of these reasons you must use my fork of Qooxdoo (https://github.com/johnspackman/qooxdoo and use the qxcompiler branch). My fork is based on Qooxdoo 5.0.1.
##Current state of play QxCompiler is an alpha release - it runs all of the tests in the demo browser and looks solid, but there are likely to be bugs. It is included in the web framework I use internally and is likely to be in use on production servers by the end of March 2016.
There are some basic functions which need to be built to make this project more accessible, EG a command line application, an easy npm-based installation, and a continuous compilation app.
One of the top goals of this project is to be very fast and lightweight - fast enough to detect code changes and recompile applications on the fly on a production server, with an application recompile costing a few hundreds of milliseconds.
##Getting Started Checkout the QxCompiler repository:
git clone https://github.com/johnspackman/qxcompiler.git
cd qxcompiler
QxCompiler includes my fork of Qooxdoo in the "qooxdoo" subdirectory, but you have to initialise it:
git submodule update --init --recursive
and then initialise the npm modules:
npm install
There is no command line application (yet) but it's easy to write a small app to compile with the API; there is a sample in test/compile-app-demo.js that builds the skeleton app in testdata/qxt. Once you make this work, you can write code in your Qooxdoo app like this:
// Add an event listener
button1.addListener("execute", () => alert("Hello World!"));###Demo Browser The Demo Browser is compiled by running test/compile-demo-browser.js - it will create the Demo Browser in testdata/demobrowser/
##Gotchas Number one gotcha is that you have to run the compiler every time you change your code, because it's being transpiled. This will get easy "real soon now" with a continuous compilation, but for the moment you have to run the compiler manually.
The old style compiler hints (eg #require, #asset etc) have been deprecated in generate.py for some time now, and they are not supported in QxCompiler at all (there will be some warnings output "real soon now" but it is a good idea to do a quick grep through your code)
##Documentation The documentation is a bit thin right now, but I'm working on it - please get in touch if you need help (see "Contributing and Getting In Touch" below)
##Minimum Requirements QxCompiler requires Node 4.x or 5.x - Node v0.12 and earlier will not work; you also need to have ImageMagick installed
sudo yum install ImageMagick
##Is QxCompiler a complete replacement for generate.py? Not quite - QxCompiler is focused on compiling applications (including collecting resources) whereas generate.py includes features for building and running test suites, creating API documentatino, building distributions, creating skeleton applications, etc. It would not be hard to replicate those extra facilities provided by generate.py using QxCompiler as a base, but it's not the focus of this project.
##What about config.json? QOOXDOO_PATH? config.json is not used by QxCompiler
##Contributing and Getting In Touch Please get stuck in to any aspects you'd like to work on - I'm open to pull requests, and you can contact me to chat about features you'd like to see or help on using or extending QxCompiler. Send me an email at john.spackman@zenesis.com or Skype me on johnspackman1 but the best place to talk about it is on the Qooxdoo mailing list at https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/qooxdoo-devel
##Feature TODO list
- Warnings for unresolved symbols and unsupported compiler hints
- Enable source maps
- Lint processing
- Part loading