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by awinder 4500 days ago
I think the question is where you want to say that the jQuery plugin should load before jQuery. If you have 20 jQuery plugins, which cross-leverage some of the same dependencies, and then all rely on jQuery -- do you want to rely on ordering script tags for dependencies in the HTML? Or do you want to leverage a module system that lets you coherently state what the dependencies are?

Also I'm not sure how Bower got dragged into this since it has nothing to do with module systems. It is a nice tool though for just tracking what third party libraries are in a project and their versions. Not sure what they did to prove to be an "abomination" :-)
1 comments
wyuenho 4500 days ago
You can declare dependencies outside of JS. Sprockets does this. Linearizing a dependency graph is pretty easy in most languages.

Bower got dragged is because it manages dependencies while providing no other help whatsoever. It's also frequently used with RequireJS/AMD. So the obvious question becomes, why can't they get in a room and make a baby that isn't a horrifying monstrosity that is the RequireJS config file?

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shadowmint 4500 days ago
You can have external JavaScript dependency tracking, but you're not solving the problem, youre just moving it from one place to another.

If you want to manually manage it (or manage it outside of js), you can... but complaining that there are various tools that automate that process seems pretty nonsensical to me. Tools that automate things are good.

... besides, what are you even talking about. Requirejs config isn't that bad. If you want to grumble we can start with grunt files and (ugh) painfully repurposed make files.

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wyuenho 4499 days ago
Solving the problem requires ES6 modules and friends to take over this entire space. Which might not happen in a while.

Lot of tools automate things, few do it well.

ReqireJS isn't that bad? Compared to what? Maven's pom.xml?

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