7-yr-old Google Closure Compiler now in JS | Hacker News Reader

7-yr-old Google Closure Compiler now in JS

developers.googleblog.com

4 pointspaulddraper5 comments

This is awesome... There have been several projects I've moved off of Closure in favor of node/npm based tooling to avoid the Java requirement... hoping to see this improve things as Closure always resulted in smaller output, but the tooling was less than ideal. I'm also not sure what features Babel supports that closure doesn't at this point, but it is nice to see this availability happen.

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More awesome, there's a vinyl stream adapter (gulp) and webpack plugin in the box.

For some reason, I've seen this sentiment a lot on HN and elsewhere. Being in Java makes it less popular.

I don't really get it. Whether in C, JS, or Java, I don't care too much. I don't need `mv` to be written in JS.

Whatever. It's basically the only JS tooling to survive 7 years. I'm happy it may be getting the use it deserves.

It isn't specifically Java... I'd have the same reservations for tooling in most languages outside of the tooling that a given project is written in. I'm pretty sure Maven wouldn't be as widely used if it required you to install a Mono/.Net runtime in order to work on your Java projects.

It's that the JS ecosystem now centers around Node+npm, and that any additional tooling required to work with projects in that space (in this case specifically Java's massive JVM and dependencies) is a hindrance to adoption. I really don't like the requirement for Python@~2.7 for binary node modules either to be honest.

I've downloaded Node+npm modules that require a C compiler.

Yeah, binary modules require a C build system and Python@~2.7, there's not much way around that... there could be tooling built with node that replaced the python bits, but V8 is a C interfaced implementation for binary modules, and without an in the box solution, options are limited... there's been some effort to get ffi in the box though.

Some binary modules will self-mount an already built version for common platforms/node versions. But that doesn't cover everyone, and may never do so. That said, build tools and python requirements are pretty well disclosed, and still generally smaller than Java. It's also a bit different to have a native module in C that interfaces with C libraries compared to needing Java to transpile a JavaScript project to JavaScript in a platform that has no other ties to that secondary language.

Again, The Java guys would never have accepted Maven if it required Mono/.Net runtimes.

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