Proposal: Move away from CLI use REPL

[frank-dspeed]

This can be backward Compatible via the CLI interface but we will add

• https://nodejs.org/api/repl.html if Node >= 10 so we can Support the overall movement to NodeOS and other Unikernel Projects

The Repl will be also shared via a local unix socket thats best practice on that and then we do a extra repl client that connects to that socket.

This way we can Programmatic control and use steal-tools directly from the repl we are also able to do remote imports directly from the repl and so are able to bundle projects even without installing them local!

That will allow us to compile only what we need and also use the new module flows desired by Node.

please lets discusse any questions

[frank-dspeed]

Examples:

• import git repo via nodejs bundle and export it in memory or temp storage( even remote )
• import multiple remote modules and transpil and export to cjs or what so ever.

Goal bypass npm install :dancer:

in future even node local projects will import modules and bundle tree shake to production :dagger:

[matthewp]

I don't think it's reason to assume people are going to start a repl to do a build. The CLI is useful for straightforward builds with no special configuration.

[justinbmeyer]

How does REPL fit in with bypassing npm install? I don't understand the connection? Is this two different things?

[frank-dspeed]

@justinbmeyer

import can from 'https://unpkg.com/can/core.mjs'
import jquery from 'https://unpkg.com/jquery@3.3.1/dist/jquery.slim.min.js'

The Main Concept of bypass Npm install is that import is not related to a path its related to a URL so we can also remote import and use that for local development we would have our regular caching proxys for domains like unpkg.

steal-tools would download both files and do its stuff as we would talk about npm packages but every javascript will export at the end as module till wasm takes over.

//import('https://unpkg.com/can/core.mjs').then(pkg=>pkg.Component).then(Compoent=>new Component)

[frank-dspeed]

@justinbmeyer oh and sorry a more current example for bypass npm i forgotten to show that

// writing to local file in a full example we would simply pipe into the steal-tools bundle stream :)
request('https://unpkg.com/can/core.mjs').pipe(fs.createWriteStream('core.mjs'))

[frank-dspeed]

The Concept of a REPL attaches to that because we could have some gist files for example that do some requests and bundle action and paste that directly into the repl the repl is a complet controll able shell that don't depends on windows or linux so its a cli the same as befor but it runs inside node it self so we could also easy have hosted steal-tools.

[frank-dspeed]

@matthewp the main idea behind the repl proposal is to attach later logging debugging and so on to that and also modify the Steal Object and play faster around with it. I think all kind of stuff can be done better directly via the javascript interface then via the console