Support ES6 import in uncompiled mode

[mseeley]

Getting started with Shaka is easy. Install shaka-player through npm and step through the basic usage documentation and quickly we're playing a video. This is good thanks.

Our application is build on ES6 modules using WebPack and Babel. Including shaka-player into our player is as simple as: import shaka from 'shaka-player';

Going from this to a uncompiled version is unclear. The good velocity from setup and getting started hit a wall.

To load the library without compiling, you will need to generate a Closure "deps file" by running ./build/gendeps.py. Then, you'll need to bootstrap your application with three < script > tags:

In order to run in uncompiled mode we have to checkout the repo, build deps, then include these files in an HTML document. What's implied is the HTML document is in the root of the shaka-player repo. This is fine when you're debugging isolated test cases. This is nearly impossible to use when debugging integration issues with application logic.

Integrating an uncompiled Shaka Player into an application is unclear. The script element recommendation won't work, dep paths are inaccessible. Importing the three files also doesn't work; they collaborate using global variables and don't understand exports. So, the import approach above doesn't work as:

import 'shaka-player/third_party/closure/goog/base';
import 'shaka-player/dist/deps';
import 'shaka-player/shaka-player.uncompiled';

It was a long shot anyway. I didn't expect the multiple import approach to work, but, hey, grasping for uncompiled straws.

Will you please consider making it easier to debug integration issues? As a developer, quickly swapping a CDNJS link from the compiled to concatenated but not mangled build would be effortless. Same is true to use a import shaka from 'shaka-player/debug'.

I'm unsure if "compiled" means concatenated and minified in the Closure Compiler world. If not, please do consider making debugging flexible while avoiding requiring users build their own players from source.

Thanks for reading!

[joeyparrish]

"Compiled" in Closure means actually compiled. The Closure compiler not only minifies and concatenates, but also takes into account type information, enforces type-safety, and applies compiler optimizations.

If you're installing from npm, the deps are already generated. The real issue seems to be that you're using ES6 imports instead of script tags, which is honestly not something we anticipated.

As such, I'm renaming this issue as "Support ES6 import in uncompiled mode". I'm not sure how we would do this off-hand, but we will keep it in mind when we start planning our next major release. Thanks!

[ajbeach2]

You should be able to do this with webpack. Its probably a case of using the expose-loader

https://webpack.github.io/docs/shimming-modules.html

[ajbeach2]

I haven't been able to test it but, i believe this is how you would do this:

npm install script-loader

require('script!shaka-player/third_party/closure/goog/base.js');
require('script!shaka-player/dist/deps.js'')
require('script!shaka-player/shaka-player.uncompiled.js')

[TheModMaker]

Now you can pass --debug to the ./build/build.py script to not rename anything and expose all private members. This should allow you to import it the same as the non-debug version but still have the normal names.

We will also be adding the debug version of the compiled library to future versions on npm. So you can include shaka-player.compiled.js for your production code and shaka-player.compiled.debug.js for debugging. So once we release v2.1.0 you will be able to just pull the debug version from npm.

[TheModMaker]

@mseeley does this work for you? Can I close this?

[mseeley]

Hi @TheModMaker. It sounds like it could; thanks a lot for the ping. :)

Please feel free to close this. I'll open an issue with updated context if we have trouble.

Thanks!