question: extracting build process to a separare module

[douglasduteil]

Hi there

I had a very hard time understanding how this plugin works. I'm still a bit moved by the forced fixed Babel version and the use of traceur to compile concat Babel sources for node and the browser.

Can you give more input over those choices ?

• Can the build process be extracted from the plugin itself ?
• Do we need two transpiler to handle code concatenation ?
• Can't we use already installed Babel for the job ?
• Is the Babel configuration file still required if we, instead of a JSPM building make, a file with concatenated Babel code in Systemjs format ?

Any way I'm currently forking your build step to a separate CLI to be able to bundle any Babel and babel plugin version I want in systemjs ready format.
It will ideally look like that :

# using the .babelrc config file + the installed files in the node_modules (if possible)
systemjs-babel-build -o my-systemjs-babel-build.js

[guybedford]

Plugins in SystemJS implement the translate hook. This is shared between the browser and Node so that module loading is handled equivalently in all environments, releasing the build process from OS-requirements, a key idea in SystemJS and jspm.

This translation can be run on its own by using builder.compile('module/name.js'), the individual module compile API provided by SystemJS builder.

The use of Traceur was actually just deprecated recently pending the next release of SystemJS builder so we now use only Babel for ES module transpilation.

If you want to do your own Babel compilation, that is fine too - the translate hook / SystemJS plugin doesn't have to be used. Just run Babel with the system modules output instead and SystemJS can load files compiled in that way.

[douglasduteil]

Alright thanks