Making a production version
Releasing an application for consumers
The version in the js-debug folder is considered a “debug version” or “development version”. If you looked at all of the files in the folder or copied them to a web server, you probably noticed there are quite a few, and that each takes time to load.
These versions are designed to be more easily debugged. Each source file has an equivalent .js file with nice, readable variable and function names. If the files are small enough and fast enough, it is perfectly fine to deploy the development version.
A production version will combine just about all of the .js into a single file, renaming variables and function names from things like “Application” to just “aa”. This is done using the Google Closure Compiler (GCC) and the results are easier to manage (fewer files to copy) and also should load more quickly (because there are fewer requests for files and smaller total file sizes).
If you are using an IDE, it probably provides an option for creating a production version. On the command line, to create a production version, don’t set debug = true. The compiler will still produce the js-debug folder, but it then will pass it to the GCC that will generate a production or “release” version in a js-release folder.
The build process will take longer as the Google compiler crunches through all of the files. There may be additional warnings, and hopefully, no errors. If there is an error, then the production version will probably not run.
On the command line, create a production version by running:
<path to Royale SDK>/royale-asjs/js/bin/mxmlc GitHubCommitsViewer.mxml
If you’ve used NPM to install Royale, you can just run:
mxmlc GitHubCommitsViewer.mxml
Then if your browser worked when you viewed the application in the js-debug folder, you can review the production version the same way in the js-release folder; or you can copy the js-release folder to your webserver.
You will probably not see any rows of commits. And if you look in the console, you may see an error that looks like:
TypeError: undefined is not an object (evaluating 'e.Vf.Qf')
Why is the production version not working? Because as the GCC renamed variables, it also renamed variables in the code that fetches fields from the data.
How do you prevent certain variables from being renamed? One way is by not using as many plain objects, especially when those objects come from an external source. If a plain object is used entirely internally, then the GCC can rename all references to a property like “message” to just “mm”. GCC doesn’t know or have a way to know that the objects in this tutorial are coming from a server.
There is more than one way to keep GCC from renaming variables, but not using plain objects has other advantages as we’ll see in the next section.
