Fixed issue #38 (added more sophisticated code optimization)

[T-vK]

It's now able to successfully remove multi-line comments and it also gets rid of unnecessary new line characters and more.
I uploaded a few test files and they ran as expected. I also downloaded them again to confirm that it was working as expected.

It also minifies variable names btw. I was a bit worried about that at first, but it's only happening to variables that are specifically defined using local, so everything fine.

[AndiDittrich]

Dear T-vK,

thanks for your contribution. i think we have to change some details of your pull request first.

generally, i prefer to add a custom option/flag for this kind of optimization/minification because it could may break existing projects (see Semantic Versioning).

my suggestion is

1. to introduce different optimization levels (like gcc) - maybe --optimize size (size only, classic whitespace removing) --optimize minify (AST based minification)

2. or add a dedicated --minify option for luamin optimization

i would prefer option 1 - what do you think ?

best regards, Andi

[T-vK]

How about this:
We add a deprecation message to the --optimize flag, but leave it the way it was.
Then we add a --minify flag which uses luamin.

I don't think we would need more optimization levels. luamin was the only module I could find and I looked at all 176 search results for lua.
Besides that we would have to allow the optimize property in a .nodemcutool file to be either true, false or a string. Certainly possible, but kind of weird. And it could potentially (although unlikely) break other tools that try to parse that file.

What do you think?

[AndiDittrich]

this solution sounds promising :)

could you please modify your pull request/add a new file LuaMinifier.js to NodeMCU-Tool which invokes luamin ?
i will add the deprecate notice soon

[T-vK]

I implemented it. But I think I found another bug #40. Basically --optimize doesn't work unless you put it in the .nodemcutool. Since I implemented --minify the exact same way, the same applies to --minify now.
Both commands work fine when using them in .nodemcutool.

[AndiDittrich]

v2.2.0 is out including your pull-request