--outfile option incompatible with current method for generating external sourcemap

The README states that if the user would like to have their sourcemap pushed to an external file, as opposed to inlined in the bundle itself, they should use exorcist and pipe browserify’s output through exorcist before writing the output file with >.

If the user makes use of the the --outfile (which doesn’t currently offer any real benefit over >, but would if #995 were to be accepted :cough:), then this method of generating an external sourcemap isn’t an option, as browserify no longer pipes to process.stdout and exorcist has no input on which to act.

It would seem that allowing browserify to directly create an external sourcemap file by either providing the --debug option with a filename as a value, or by adding a --debug-file option would be useful.

I don’t know that this is directly resolvable within browserify, as sourcemap generation appears to be delegated to browser-pack, so I’m hoping that @substack or someone else equally familiar with both packages could provide some input as to whether this is possible, or if it’s been discussed and rejected as a feature in the past.

Thanks.

[ghost]

Then don’t use -o? I don’t see what’s so hard about:

$ browserify main.js --debug | exorcist bundle.js.map > bundle.js

especially when the docs mention exorcist already and provide a handy example.

[alundiak]

I can’t use --outfile when path to file contains not existed yet folder. Any ideas how can I configure it?

 "build-js": "browserify src/main.js --debug -o dist/bundle.js",

dist is not existed.

My workaround:

"scripts": {
  "build-css": "lessc src/my.less dist/my.css",
  "build-js": "browserify src/main.js -o dist/bundle.js",
  "prebuild": "mkdir dist",
  "build": "npm run build-css && npm run build-js"
},

And when I run npm run build, then prebuild is executed before and all is goo with browserify, But maybe there is a chance to configure browserify to create dist folder?