Provide prebuilt versions of ShareDB

[gkjohnson]

Hello!

I'm really liking ShareDB, but I'm less keen on the Webpack or Browserify requirement to load client files. I find them a bit cumbersome when trying to put something like a prototype together quickly.

Would the "Share" organization consider supporting this repo or something like it with pre-built ShareDB client needs in order to enable a wider variety of use cases and development processes?

I'm open to feedback and suggestions!

Thanks!
Garrett

[gkjohnson]

Hello again!

Any official thoughts on this? Any suggestions regarding how version numbers for this should work would also be appreciated.

Otherwise, are there any objections to publishing this to npm myself?

Thank you!
Garrett

[gkjohnson]

I've published the package to here:
https://www.npmjs.com/package/@gkjohnson/sharedb-builds
for anyone interested.

Unfortunately it seems like this repo isn't all that active any more. Does anyone know if there are plans to keep it going?

[nateps]

Hey! Thanks the suggestion.

Do you know of any good examples of other libraries that do this? I'm interested in how they solve the problem and what the best practices might be.

[gkjohnson]

Hey! Thanks for getting back to me!

Off the top of my head, both Ace Editor (ace repo and ace-builds repo) and THREE.js (THREE repo and THREE dist files) provide pre-built versions of their libraries which otherwise use require or import, either in the same repo or a different one.

Admittedly, neither of those libraries attempts to bundle components that are versioned independently into a single package, though.

Ultimately my goal would be to have a version of the library that is statically loadable and usable in the browser without having to stand up any kind of build process. If I can avoid it, I prefer to work without building or packing, particularly on short-lived projects like prototypes and concept demonstrations. ShareDB in particular, being such a powerful and easy to use library, would be nice to have accessible in that way.

Since I posted this question ES6 Imports have become pretty usable. I'm less familiar with the inner workings of ShareDB and how much it depends on external packages, but another option might be moving to an import rather than a require syntax, which would allow all the lib files to be loaded in the browser natively without making a distribution build.

I'm interested in other thoughts on this, too! With the web moving and growing so quickly it can be hard to keep up with all the available solutions.

Thanks again!