将纯RequireJS项目移至Maven

Question

I have project that use bare Javascript (+ Jquery + Backbone) with RequireJS. I include dependencies like:

require.config({
    baseUrl: "./js/",
    paths: {
        jquery: 'lib/jquery-1.8.2',
        underscore: 'lib/underscore-1.4.2',
        backbone: 'lib/backbone-1.1.2',
        'backbone.localStorage': 'lib/backbone.localStorage'
    },
    shim: {
        underscore: {
            exports: "_"
        },
        backbone: {
            deps: ['underscore', 'jquery'],
            exports: 'Backbone'
        },
        'backbone.localStorage': {
            deps: ['backbone'],
            exports: 'Backbone'
        }
    }
});

I want: move project to maven. I don't want to include all that deps in such ugly way. Moreover, I want to use Hibenate, Spring and another deps that should be imported via maven.

Problem: I haven't deep understanding of how do maven plugins or RequireJs work. I looked at this , but understand nothing.

Question: Can you write a step-by-step action points how to move my app to maven?

Answer 1

Maven is not really an answer to the ( alleged ) "ugliness" of the configuration you showed because it works on a completely different level. To begin with, Maven is a server-side tool and RequireJS is client-side (apologies if you already knew it, but -> "I haven't deep understanding of how do maven plugins or RequireJs work" ). This configuration is specific to RequireJS so there's no way to go around it.

Even with Maven you still need to configure your front-end application and tell it where to find the required dependencies and how to initialise them. Client application's paths are web resources which can be arbitrarily different from the file structure of your project so it's not easy to automate the configuration process.

I've been using the RequireJS maven plugin (found it in one of the answers in the same question you posted) for wrapping r.js but it was rather painful to set up, especially with resource timestamping. I just feel that this approach is flawed due to fundamental differences between Java and JavaScript tooling - you'll always end up with a less-than-ideal compromise and any non-standard steps will eat a lot of time and research.

Another approach that's gaining popularity is to completely split your client- and server-side applications into separate projects, allowing you to use language-specific tooling to make the process as smooth as possible. Server-side uses Maven, client-side uses Grunt+Bower+RequireJS+etc. Both sides talk through well-defined interfaces using JSON over HTTP.

It should be easy to find some introductory reading material, but since you're mentioning Spring it could be worth starting by having a look at the reference Spring application: Sagan . It demonstrates how to split front- and back-end into separate Maven submodules that share the same common "core".

---

A stop-gap solution that makes working with JS libraries with Maven a little bit more civilised is using webjars . You define your dependencies directly in pom.xml and they're easily exposed to the front-end like other static assets. However, this limits your options when it comes to bundling or customisation of the libraries.