Update UglifyJS

[jscharett]

Looks like UglifyJS 3.X has been released. Any plans on updating to support it?

[jrburke]

There seem to be two options, an uglify-js or uglify-es, and both use the 3.x API of uglify which is not backwards compatible with 2.x.

So the concerns would be:

• Since it sounds like it has a breaking API, should r.js be major version revved to 3.x so that people who are passing uglify args via r.js config are not broken? Seems like the version should be revved if uglify is bundled with r.js.
• Should the -es or -js version be used? I am concerned that the -es version is still new, may still have unpleasant bugs.

Given these concerns and that JS packages are more easily used with each other now via node/npm vs when r.js was started, maybe the answer is to version rev r.js to 3.x but remove any built in minifier so that way the choice of minifier is decoupled from the module bundling tool.

I am sort of favoring that option, but open to hearing reasons why a minifier should still be in r.js.

[ScottFreeCode]

I, for one, would gladly bundle and minimize as separate steps in order to have a better choice of minifier. (Although, it must be admitted, that can be done now by turning off minimization when running r.js...)

[jscharett]

I like the thought of being able to choose a minifier. It might be nice to still include one as a default for simplicity, but be able to easily override it.

As for es vs js, I thought es was the new version, targeting es6 and js was the older one targeting es5 syntax. If made configuable, maybe target the js as default for better backwards compatability and stability. Users could override with es if they so choose so.

[wstoettinger]

Any updates on that?

[nelsieborja]

Came across with the same requirement today so just want to share how I made it possible with grunt. First I did it via shell (as suggested above) but then I thought it doesn't seem cool and there should be better way, so here it is:

First need to install uglify-es npm install uglify-es --save-dev
Then in Grunt file do:

requirejs: { 
    options: {
        optimize: 'none',
        out: function(text, sourceMapText) {
            var UglifyJS = require('uglify-es'),
                uglified = UglifyJS.minify(text);

            grunt.file.write(<filepath>, uglified.code);
        }
    }
}

[nelson777]

And how would I translate

out: "<%= dest %>/js/whatever.js",

to <filepath> in this solution ?

update

I found it minutes later. Will leave it here just to facilitate in case someone needs it:

grunt.file.write(grunt.config.get("dest") + "/js/whatever.js", uglified.code);

[jrburke]

Since there seems to be a desire to keep a bundled uglify, for backcompat reasons to avoid breaking people's config where they could be passing config to uglify, I will keep the uglify-js 2.x series in the code for now. I also added some docs and extra info on an uglify parse error about trying optimize: 'none' and using an ES2015+compatible minifier after the r.js step.

I also updated latest master to uglify 2.8.29. Release 2.3.4 includes an esprima update so at least parsing to build the combined file will work with latest JS/ES syntax.

Going to close this ticket now, and going forward the guidance will be to use optimize: none with a separate minifier if wanting to minify ES2015+ code.