BTM Packager
About
BTM-Packager was created to allow for easier development of large JavaScript/CSS files/libraries. The initial demand for this was the BTM-JS library.
History
The initial idea came from examining the Prototype source files. Because of their background with Ruby on Rails, the Prototype team uses a Rake process to build the separate JS source files into a single prototype.js. I didn't particularly like the way their process worked, having extra non JavaScript code in the source files, but I liked the result: logically separated source, and an easy to build single-file result.
An interim solution using a series of shell scripts expanded the scope to include the following:
- automatic code compression & encoding for both JavaScript and CSS
- generating documentation for both JavaScript and CSS
- inserting license details into output files
Requirements
- PHP5. I have no plans to support PHP4.
- Nicolas Martin's PHP port of Dean Edwards' Packer is used for compressing & encoding JavaScript files.
- Growl (Mac/Windows)is used for reporting (optional)
Future
BTM-Packager is still being improved, below are some of the current plans:
- Support for the {less} CSS system
- More IDE plugins
- Generate documentation from source files, using JSDoc Toolkit and CSSDoc
Availability
Currently BTM-Packager is available as:
- a script to run from a command shell (Windows/Mac/Linux); and
- as a plugin for Coda
Download
Coming soon, I promise!
