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Code Splitting

See original GitHub issue

GWT has a cool feature named Code Splitting which loads parts of the code on demand. This is also appliable for webmake.

Here my idea:

// a.js:
var b = require("b");
// ...
bindEventHandlerForSomeRarEvent(function() {
  // the magic keyword "process.nextTick", which behaves normally in node.js
  // but so some special thing in webmake
  process.nextTick(function(err) {
    // Some code loading err handler
    // err is undefined in node.js
    if(err) { /* ... */ }
    var c = require("c"); // really big libary, which is only needed in this rar case
    // ...
  });
});

webmake core would provide the magic process.nextTick function to the compiled code. process.nextTick do this in the compiled code:

store the callback function
adds a script tag to the document
the script contains JSONP
callback function (JSONP) adds some new modules to the context
and calls the stored callback function.
in case of an error (ex. timeout) the stored callback function is called with some kind of error parameter

Here is a quick hint on the compiled files:

// output.js
( /* core code */
({
  "a": function(/* ... */, process) {
     // a.js:
     var b = require("b");
     // ...
     bindEventHandlerForSomeRarEvent(function() {
       // the magic keyword, which behaves normally in node.js
       // but so some special thing in webmake
       process.nextTick(function(err) {
         // Some code loading err handler
         // err is undefined in node.js
         if(err) { /* ... */ }
         var c = require("c"); // really big libary, 
               // which is only needed in this rar case
         // ...
       });
     });
  },
  "b": function /* content of b.js */
  // here is no "c": !!
  // which saves bandwidth

// may be named "a.output.js":
webmake_magic_jsonp_function( // the jsonp callback function
"a", // origin of code loading (used for identifing the stored function)
{
  "c": function(/* ... */, process) {
    // the content of the big libary
  },
  "d": function(/* ... */, process) {
    // d.js is here a dependency of c.js (optional)
  }
}

This feature may makes the compile process a big complexer.

It may be useful for: