Using RequireJS syntax in Jetpack Reboot

I have a clone of the Jetpack SDK that has support for the require() and require.def() syntax supported by RequireJS.

Right now the syntax support is very basic. It does not support these features of RequireJS:

• configuring require() by passing in a config object to it
• plugins
• require.modify
• require.nameToUrl
  
• require.ready (does not make sense)

But you can do the main things, like:

require(["dependency"], function (dependency){}());

and define modules via:

require.def("moduleName", ["dependency"], function (dependency){}());

It should also support CommonJS modules that were converted to RequireJS syntax via the conversion tool in RequireJS, but I have not tested it extensively.

The changes are just in one file in the sdk, securable-module.js. So you could just grab that file if you wanted to play with it. There is a sample app in the source if you want to see it in action. Also viewing the changeset shows the diff on the securable-module.js file as well as the example app source.

The full cloned repo is available via:

hg clone http://hg.mozilla.org/users/jrburke_gmail.com/jetpack-sdk-requirejs

Why do this? Because sharing code between the browser and other environments is hard with the regular CommonJS syntax. It does not work well in the browser. The browser-based CommonJS loaders that use eval() have a worse debugging experience. Starting with the RequireJS syntax makes it easy to transfer the modules for use in the web browser, and the RequireJS code works in Node and Rhino.

I would like to add support for RequireJS plugins in Jetpack. I can see the i18n plugin and text file plugin being useful for Jetpacks. That will likely take more work though. I want to see if the basic syntax support is useful first.

I ended up not using that much RequireJS code, just some argument conversions and supporting "setting the exported value". It relies on the existing Jetpack code for paths and package support.