[WIP] Export modules for AMD consumption

[blink1073]

cf #1554 (comment)

• Break the pages into vendor and main using the WebPack DllPlugin.
• Use a script to generate a RequireJS bundle from the DLL manifest.
• The script will walk through the manifest contents and create define functions of the form:

define('base/js/auth', function() { return vendor(100); });

• We get the path by replacing ./notebook/static/ with '' and ./node_modules/ with '' and stripping out the .js (along with making sure it has a .js extension first).
• The HTML template will include the RequireJS bundle after including the vendor bundle and RequireJS itself.
• After that, all modules on the page are available using the previous AMD require semantics.

Here is what the manifest looks like for the terminal:

{
  "name": "vendor",
  "content": {
    "./notebook/static/terminal/js/main.js": 1,
    "./node_modules/xterm/src/xterm.css": 2,
    "./node_modules/css-loader/index.js!./node_modules/xterm/src/xterm.css": 3,
    "./node_modules/css-loader/lib/css-base.js": 4,
    "./node_modules/style-loader/addStyles.js": 5
  }
}

And the resulting shim is:

define("terminal/js/main", function () { return vendor(1); });
define("css-loader/lib/css-base", function () { return vendor(4); });
define("style-loader/addStyles", function () { return vendor(5); });

Status

The WebPack bundles and manifests and shims are created and the tree page is functional.

[blink1073]

Drat. In order for this to work all of the modules will have to be converted to be fully CommonJS. Otherwise the bulk of the modules end up in 1.vendor.js and are not in the DLL manifest.

[blink1073]

@gnestor, @minrk. I am 100% convinced this will work if I implement the above, but it is going to be time consuming and invasive.

[minrk]

I like it in principle, but I don't like how much work we are making you do on this. @blink1073 what do you think about the tradeoffs in terms of effort of getting webpack to not break requirejs here vs going back to requirejs with no webpack?

[blink1073]

Looking at the package.json, all of the dependencies are available on bower. I'd say going back to being bower + requirejs-only is the way to go. It is the least brittle solution, since the above solution requires making sure everything is available as a commonjs import and stays that way.

[minrk]

I'd say going back to being bower + requirejs-only is the way to go

That makes sense to me. I took a stab at exactly that a while back, but too many webpack changes had been made for it to be really easy, and I ran out of time.

[blink1073]

I'll close this one then. :(