Rome: An experimental JavaScript toolchain • Hacker News Board

Re: Rome: An experimental JavaScript toolchain

#41

Post by Raed667 » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 5:01 PM UTC

I have been following the progress of this project on Twitter for months. However I'm very skeptical to see this project used in a production app.

Re-implementing the entire JS toolchain for a modern SPA is a HUGE task, just checkout CRA dependencies : https://github.com/facebook/create-react-app/blob/master/pac...

Re: Rome: An experimental JavaScript toolchain

#42

Post by earthboundkid » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

Does it work with Deno? I'd love to burn down the existing JS world and move to a better one.

Re: Rome: An experimental JavaScript toolchain

#43

Post by heleninboodler » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 5:07 PM UTC

choward wrote: post #26

throwaway894345 wrote: post #5

Maybe this is intuitive to JS devs, but what are the advantages of "zero third-party dependencies" and "being a comprehensive tool for the processing of anything JS related" or any of the other selling points of Rome? It seems like an impressive project, but it's not obvious to me what its actual benefits are.

Have you used npm before? It's a complete mess.

Prerequisites: npm

Re: Rome: An experimental JavaScript toolchain

#44

Post by chrisseaton » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

qeternity wrote: post #36

chrisseaton wrote: post #28

What does it compile JavaScript to? WebAssembly or machine code or something else?

Probably ES6 to ES5

Oh right a transpiler.

Re: Rome: An experimental JavaScript toolchain

#45

Post by rvz » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

What a very 'interesting' name for a project that is an integrated and consistent Javascript toolchain that aims to replace existing third party libraries and tools. It may be too early to see if this is a good idea or not but who knows, at least no one can say that this was built in a day.

Re: Rome: An experimental JavaScript toolchain

#46

Post by godot » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

Raed667 wrote: post #41

I have been following the progress of this project on Twitter for months. However I'm very skeptical to see this project used in a production app. Re-implementing the entire JS toolchain for a modern SPA is a HUGE task, just checkout CRA dependencies : https://github.com/facebook/create-react-app/blob/master/pac...

It looks like Rome is a Facebook Open Source project, so there's reasons to believe a huge amount of resources is being put into it (probably the only way something like this is feasible).

(This is not a statement either pro or against FB, just a neutral one :)

Re: Rome: An experimental JavaScript toolchain

#47

Post by projektfu » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

joosters wrote: post #33

W4ldi wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

typescript is just a language, how is that a dependency? by that logic, nothing is dependency free.

But the end users can't run the typescript, whereas they can run javascript directly. So, an external tool is required by the developer. A similar comparison would be shipping a program to end users, saying that 'no dependencies required', but instead of giving them a binary to run, you hand them a c++ file. I think everyone would agree that a C++ compiler is clearly a required dependency in that case.

Would you say the same about a single-header library for C++?

Re: Rome: An experimental JavaScript toolchain

#48

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

From the Getting Started Guide:

> Then, navigate into it and build rome:

> cd rome; ./scripts/build-release dist

Be aware that this command might take a long time to complete. After all, Rome wasn't built in a day.

Re: Rome: An experimental JavaScript toolchain

#49

Post by bikeshaving » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

dlbucci wrote: post #3

This is a really exciting idea to me, but this website is pretty anemic (guessing it's a work in progress?). Kinda surprising to me, given the 7K stars on github. Maybe it should be submitted when it's a little more filled in?

As a person who’s getting ready to drop a project: what about the docs site is “anemic”? It’s using docusaurus which is pretty snazzy as far as docs sites go. Do you mean the amount of content on the site?

Re: Rome: An experimental JavaScript toolchain

#50

Post by sam_goody » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

Is this meant to replace Webpack + some list of plugins, does this get added to Webpack, or is this meant to go somewhere else entirely in the JS toolchain?

If this replaces Webpack, can someone please list a combination of popular plugins that this compares to. (Or even a few lists - would it replace Grunt + something?)

If not, can you tell me what other software this compares to, so that I can better understand it?

I am sure that I am not the only one who has some familiarity, but doesn't live in the system. Having a point of comparison would be extremely helpful.