--compress true - is it a good default?

[Andarist]

IMHO it makes debugging harder, its not easy to look into source code of libraries in node_modules (built by microbundle) nor it is easy to debug microbundle itself because its built by itself with --compress true (default).

I guess the question is what is a primary goal & target of this tool? If producing micro libraries then I think files should be left unminified by default, minifying can be done later by subsequent tools - bundlers etc.

[developit]

The goal of microbundle is primarily to package tiny modules that are used in a browser context. In this respect, minification is the most logical default.

[freeman]

Don’t know if it is possible but maybe only the UMD build should be minified, given that the CJS and ESM version mostly imply the consumer is using a bundler ?

[Andarist]

Don’t know if it is possible but maybe only the UMD build should be minified, given that the CJS and ESM version mostly imply the consumer is using a bundler ?

It's certainly possible and what would be a good fit here. I propose 3 possible values of compress option:

• undefined (treated as auto/default) - compress only umd
• true - compress all
• false - compress nothing

[developit]

Another option that might be worth adding is a way to do --compress pretty, which would run Uglify, but use { output: { pretty: true } }. That would apply all the nice inlining and transformations, but produce readable multiline output.

I'm thinking that might be a sensible default if passing --target node? It'd be performance-optimized, but not compressed.

[Andarist]

Will work on this, once #62 gets merged (it has improved support for tests) - and we will be able to discuss further under the PR about used approach.

[boneskull]

I don't think it's clear enough this is intended for browser usage due to the default "target" being "node" (this option isn't really explained?)

I kind of assumed it would gracefully handle builtins, but it doesn't.

[vladshcherbin]

Came here with the same issue when bundling for node.

The goal of microbundle is primarily to package tiny modules that are used in a browser context. In this respect, minification is the most logical default.

Really weird to see this when default target is node. Maybe readme should be updated with this one to avoid confusion and better understanding of package purpose.

[kzc]

A way to opt out of minification would be useful for debugging.

[lukeed]

Instead of an all or nothing boolean, can take the same approach as --format and pass a group of formats to compress.

$ microbundle src --format cjs,umd,iife --compress umd,iife
#=> CJS is the only unminified

Not specifying any groups would assume all formats want compression. This way it's not breaking~!

$ microbundle src
#=> all (default) formats compressed

$ microbundle src --compress
#=> (redundant) compress=true ==> all formats

[Andarist]

IMHO this would bloat CLI api a lot. Every other current (and future) option would "need" to support it, adding this to a single option would look weird. It also closes a little bit things like mentioned pretty value (basically any option that could have more than 2 values).

I think microbundle should provide most reasonable defaults with not that many configurable parts (although I don't really believe in 0 configuration tools, so actually I might propose some more advanced ways to customize in the future). If you need such fine-grained control, passing different options' values for different formats etc you can always just have 2 microbundle scripts instead of 1, each targeting specific subset of formats.

[lukeed]

Hmmm, not so sure that I agree with the idea that current options would need to support this.

Of all our options, only format and compress are the only options that deal with how the output is printed. All others deal with generating the content directly (strict, name, external).

Personally, I'm totally fine with the current compress behavior. My suggestion above is just to accomodate the request in a non-breaking way.

[Andarist]

Imho both strict & external could be considered as those that should support it. Also your proposed option regarding source map generation.

[lukeed]

Yeah I suppose. Fair enough 😄

[kzc]

I've never used microbundle, only looked at the docs... I'm assuming that watch mode does not perform minification for quicker dev cycles?