[OpenLayers-Dev] OpenLayerer & build tools refactoring

[Tom MacWright]

Hey All,
Two days ago, I finally looked at the OpenLayers build tools and at my
current situation with the large weight on OpenLayers on lots of production
sites, and figured that it would be very easy to build a web interface for
the build tools something like the jQuery UI download builder, or the
mootools core builder. Anyway, it was very simple to do, and a proof of
concept is up at http://openlayerer.appspot.com/ (say it ten times fast).
Building that simple site gave me a pretty good vantage point to see the
problem points of the build tools, especially build.py, which doensn't even
have code to be included - whenever its code is loaded, it runs. So, the
results are a ticket, first of all, which refactors build.py and eliminates
the need for buildUncompressed.py. The patch basically makes the source
understandable, prevents the module from running on include, and gives some
better entry points for 3rd party projects (like my own) to get in.
http://trac.openlayers.org/ticket/2260

The second is the code for the appengine-powered site on github (which
doesn't use that patch yet http://github.com/tmcw/OpenLayerer/tree/master ).
Roadmap for that looks like:

* selecting formats, debug tools as well
* specifying whether you want compression to be performed at all
* specifying a version (very close on this one, it's a very simple change)
* eventually showing some indication of file size before you press 'do it'
* probably restyling.

Since this kind of online tool somewhat bucks the unfortunately prevailing
idea that OpenLayers is huge and prolific, it might be the kind of thing
OpenLayers.org might be interested in. Regardless, I'm interested to hear
what you all think about this kind of work and please take a look at the
code & patches.

Tom MacWright
http://www.developmentseed.org/
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