[OpenLayers-Dev] OpenLayerer & build tools refactoring

[Tim Schaub]

Hey-

Tom MacWright wrote:
> 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 

Cool.

Thanks for taking the initiative to do this.  I think it would be great 
to have a service like this available from openlayers.org (even just an 
iframe to your appspot).

Ideally, the build utility would assemble itself based on what is in the 
library.  In addition, it would be great if the user was provided some 
indication of dependencies (click on WMS layer and see Grid, 
HTTPRequest, etc. checked and disabled).

As the library changes with each version (and each commit), I imagine 
you'll want to have the configuration for each build version be 
generated based on the library itself (generating a list of files and 
dependencies from the library).

> 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

I'll take a look at this now.

Thanks again for getting this started.

Tim

> 
> 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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-- 
Tim Schaub
OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org
Expert service straight from the developers.