[Mapbender-dev] Packer (code conventions)

[Marc Jansen]

Hello list, Hi Christoph,


Christoph Baudson (WhereGroup) schrieb:
> Another thing that we should keep in mind is, that a lot of different 
> js-scripts are loaded into map.php on startup, and conflicts could 
> arise if each script would be compressed individually (as Dean 
> Edwards' packer shortens variable names as well).
>

Yes the names are shortened, but that should not be a problem since 
everything  done by Dean Edwards packer is being reverted as the script 
is loaded. The whole resultung function (p, a, c, k, e, d){...} is being 
evaluated at once. Different scripts are sent through eval in the order 
of presence of script-tags in the markup. I used is together with about 
6 other scripts and there were no problems.

> I did a little research, and found this list of JS obfuscators and 
> packers (there are quite a lot)
>
> http://www.javascriptsearch.com/guides/Advanced/articles/061221JSObfuscators.html 
>
>

I think we should keep in mind that our target is not obfuscation. Lots 
of the tools listed on this page have annoying descriptions:

"...is a utility for all JavaScript programmers who are fed up with the 
fact, that their source code can be stolen and simply modified."
"...will encode javascript to make it more difficult for people to read 
and/or steal..."

Sure enough other packers should be considered. Can't we make up a small 
test page in the wiki with results for some of the tools and pros and 
cons for each?

> Especially this one
>
> http://www.saltstorm.net/depo/esc/varsubst.wbm
>
> seems to be interesting, as it is free software and can handle the 
> compression of multiple (dependent) js files.
>

As mentioned above, I don't think there are new dependencies related to 
packing... at least with Dean Edwards tool

> So I guess we should consider other packers as well. If anyone has 
> experience with any of these or other tools, please share your knowledge.
>
> Christoph
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-- Marc