post transform file cache

[browserify]

post transform file cache

[DonutEspresso]

Update: I captured the raw records being emitted by the transform stream on the data event, and saved those record objects. You can then feed those records into a new module-deps instance as the cache object and that seems to do the trick.

Is there any concern around this approach? AFAICT, this seems to work correctly and significantly speeds up subsequent runs of module-deps.

[jmm]

@DonutEspresso I can't answer all of your questions, but I've been wanting that stuff to be better documented and more consistent for a long time. file|id are some of the worst offenders. See for example:

• http://jmm.github.io/browserify-pipeline-docs/
• browserify/browserify#1162
• browserify/browserify#1203

Certain properties of those record objects are meaningful at certain phases of the pipeline (module-deps being one of the phases). I think package is the object represented by package.json. entry means is it an "entry" file, i.e. will it be executed when the bundle executes. Normally a b.add()ed file is an entry whereas a b.required() one isn't, for example.

You could also take a look at what watchify does, as I think it monkeys with that cache data, and its purpose is to speed up subsequent browserify bundling operations on mostly the same set of files.

Related: #72

[DonutEspresso]

Thanks @jmm, appreciate the info and the links. I had a lot of trouble trying to "recreate" the records. I'd get inconsistent output from the stream when doing so, probably because I was feeding it bad data. Good to know I'm not the only one confused. :) In the end, I simply captured the emitted records "as-is" without changing them (all fields intact), then feeding them back in next time. That got me the consistent output from run to run, so it appears to be working so far

AFAICT, all the records emitted appeared to have id, source, file, deps. entry: true is there for all files I suspect that are added directly to module-deps via write() or end(). entry seems to be missing only when the file is located in node_modules, or is an unparseable file (i.e., require('./random.ext')), then random.ext would get emitted, but without the entry value.

I think it might be worthwhile delineating out what things are specific to module-deps, vs in the context of browserify.