Use of node modules...

[TravisTheTechie]

Use of node modules...

[ifandelse]

Hey thanks for the feedback on this. Some of it (i.e.- better build script, etc.) has fallen to the wayside b/c of the "it works, and there are other fish to fry" mentality (I admit it, I'm guilty). Other things, though, I wrestle back and forth on (like the inclusion of node_modules) - since the nodetesthost.js included in the repo (used for running tests and examples) depends on that to be present. Anvil is an exception, since it's docs recommend it to be installed globally - but there's not anything stopping me from making it a local dep. I will try and make a pass through to address some of this stuff in the coming month or two while I'm prepping for my devLINK talks.....

[TravisTheTechie]

So people who run node apps know they need to do npm install to install the needed packages. Rather like rails guys know to bundle install. I'm just thinking of things that I deal with in the other OSS projects, dealing them with early is a lot less painful :) I'll take a swing at them a bit later if you don't zoom ahead. Then you can see if you like what I did or if I'm just full of it.

[nicholascloud]

I'd be happy to review the node changes, if this is still an open issue.

[nicholascloud]

It might also be a good idea to eliminate the content of the lib directory in source control and require a build after cloning the repo. That way we don't have to worry about forgetting to build before pushing to github.

[TravisTheTechie]

I think Jim is ignoring my changes. It's his call, so it's all good.

Though having the latest compiled publicly accessible is nice. I would likely use travis-ci or something similar over having it committed.

[nicholascloud]

An alternative to having a root-level package.json file would be to simply include npm install directives in the build script (which would check for the presence of the npm packages under /node_modules), although this seems a little... kludgy?

Is there a reason that anvil is being used over jake?

[ifandelse]

I wouldn't say that I'm ignoring @LegoMaster's changes - it's just that I've honestly not had time to address much postal-wise outside of the devlink prep that I've been buried with until this past week. I've got one more speaking engagement and then - once I've been able to SLEEP - I will definitely get back on all this stuff. @nicholascloud - I'm open to npm install and/or npm start directives - let's talk about that sometime soon (just bear with me as I'm coming down off of an insane summer). Regarding anvil - sometime we should G+ hangout with @arobson, and he can walk you through the road map of what's ahead. I'd been waiting on the ground-up rewrite of anvil before I clean up all the build assets in postal (it's already starting with the last push I made, but it's not done). There are lots of reasons why I'm using it over other options - most notably being the plugin architecture it now supports, the fact that the build configurations are quite terse, and follow good conventions out of the box (but can be easily overridden), consistency with my other projects, test and ci hooks, and more.

[nicholascloud]

Yeah, that would be awesome! I'd never heard of anvil until I started poking around with postal. Excited to learn!