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REWRITE IN PROGRESS

Xlib is being rewritten from first principles. The current master branch of this repo is dedicated to this rewrite. The current npm xlib package points to [email protected] which is a stable, high quality core/util library for node. See the v17 branch for it's source.

The v17 branch is:

  • highly stable
  • full featured
  • used in production
  • available as the default npm xlib package

The problems with v17

  • too opinionated: had debugging and logging interactions built into the runtime. v18 includes a logger and source-map-support but doesn't do these automatically.
  • obsolete features
    • required Bluebird promises: bluebird was great before promises became a native part of javascript. v18 has xlib.promise which supports any promise implementation you use.
    • brittle axios: axios "works" but fails for advanced features (proxy, network failures, authentication). v18 uses gaxios instead and is less strongly tied to it.
    • no use of async/await: not in itself a reason to rewrite, but supporting async/await by default simplifies the api
  • node only: v18 targets browsers and node equally

The remainder of this readme is dedicated to the v18 rewrite.

XLIB v18+

Your isomorphic toolbox

Goals

  • Monorepo: the core xlib, tooling, and build verification projects all live in this repo
  • Docs: full online documentation
  • Promises: async / await by default
  • Isometric: full support for node and browser
  • Performance: take advantage of worker threads where it makes sense
  • Full Featured: aim to provide 80% of utility needs
  • Professional: no hacks, fully documented, deployment environment aware
  • Dev Experience: will include dev-env scafolding scripts and an easy build system
  • Lightweight: A library, not framework. No unexpected logging to console, tree-shake support

Non-Goals

  • Legacy browser support: Ignoring IE, but Edge-Classic support will be attempted
  • Legacy Node support: Development is done on Node 14.x. Node 12.x should work fine.
  • Dev Tooling Agnostism: Development is done on VSCode via ubuntu. You should be able to build/dev on windows, but it's not tested.
    • Win10 Tip: Use WSL for development!

R&D Status

Current v18.x is of develop build quality (meaning: do not use this right now).

Critical R&D complete. Now porting most useful xlib features to the new codebase.

The following signifiers will be attached to the v18 rewrite as work progresses

  • develop: not suitable for any use.
  • alpha: usable for PoC projects only.
  • beta: can be used for production, but features may be missing, and breaking changes should be expected between xlib versions

COMPLETE

  • isomorphic: xlib feature parity for browser and node projects
    • Full test suite runs (and passes) under Node and Evergreen Firefox + Chrome
  • typings: ensure dependent projects get sub-package typings automatically
    • basically, tsconfig.json has to be setup properly. for example, esModuleInterop:true
  • debugging: ensure dependent projects can debug into xlib's *.ts source files
    • dependent project's launch.json needs to properly setup the outFiles setting. see build-examples/xlib-node-basic
    • browser debugging properly sourcemaps to original .ts files
  • monorepo: develop xlib ecosystem as seperate projects within the same repository
    • use npm @microsoft/rush
  • upgradeability: ensure dependent modules can be properly upgraded in a reliable way
    • use rush check and rush dep-check and rush dep-upgrade for this workflow
  • documentation: proper code documentation, auto-gen from source
  • testing: isometric testing supported: mocha used in browsers, jest used in node.
    • jest doesn't work in browsers. didn't switch to full mocha because heft nicely runs jest tests when it builds typescript, and I don't want to spend the time figuring out to do similar with mocha.
    • however there is a problem, in that jest's expect library isn't available cross-platform and it doesn't seem easy to register another assertion lib to globally override jest's in node.
    • so currently working on building the xlib.diagnostics.logging module to handle this kind of work.

PENDING

  • publishing: ensure xlib ecosystem can be published to npm
  • basic react e2e: proof of concept using react to setup a real app (including ssl and dev vs production env)
  • doc site: a documenation site with full text search and versioning
  • modern promise libary
    • probably just use builtin promises
  • enterprise grade logging system (without the enterprise plumbing requirement)
    • ??? some plugable listener lib probably
  • isomorphic worker threads: currently using npm threads which works, but is brittle