Quoting Frank Wienberg <fr...@jangaroo.net>:
On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 6:42 PM, Michael Schmalle
<apa...@teotigraphix.com>wrote:
For FalconJS this process is totally bound to SWF format.
This was my point. For any developer to fix bugs here they have to know
the SWF format. Which I don't.
This is why I propsed another solution using pure AST like Jangaroo does.
I am not skilled enough to understand the trade offs currently. But I am
going to try and see if I can create the same JS code using a different
algorithm.
I guess the trade off is that the AST approach leads to a different
packaging format. For Jangaroo, we use JARs that contain the generated JS
code as well as generated AS "API stubs" (under META-INF/joo-api), that is
the AS code is reduced to its API, using the "native" keyword. This allows
to compile against other modules without having their source code. However,
the consequence is that you need a different classpath and custom build
tools: we created a Maven plugin that provides a custom packaging type
currently called "jangaroo" that outputs a JAR in the format described
above.
When the output format is SWC/SWF, you more closely resemble Flash/Flex.
But honestly, unless we transform ActionScript byte code into JavaScript
(or interpret it in JavaScript like in Gordon's approach), we cannot use
any "binary" modules, anyway, but instead all modules have to be recompiled
for use with FalconJS, or even worse you need the complete source code for
the whole project, which would increase build time and hinder real modular
development as well as closed source modules--quite a show stopper for an
Enterprise tool!
-Frank-
Ok, I didn't even think about the recompile. So in my mind, please
correct me if I'm wrong, the SWC/SWF probably was chosen because it IS
the packaging and organization structure currently. Where you are
using a jar as you said. Correct?
Since you have so much experience with as->js, what is your opinion on
implementation? I'm asking because I might be putting a lot of work
into the compiler output and would like to know which direction. Do
you see any way of interfacing jangaroo and falcon/falconjs?
Do you think offering the straight AST emitter(which would allow
granular compiles with native stubs) like yours AND the SWF/SWC option
and somehow getting them on the same API is something to consider?
As I said earlier, you have some great code, I would love to work
together somehow to get a nice application framework our there like
Flex ontop of JS and whatever other language we could get to, Android,
iOS, whatever.
Thanks for all your time Frank!
Mike
--
Michael Schmalle - Teoti Graphix, LLC
http://www.teotigraphix.com
http://blog.teotigraphix.com
