In fact, when I last touched it, Reflection was optional. Unless you
actually use a reflection API (whose code path access
FLEXJS_REFLECTION_INFO), GCC did not output FLEXJS_REFLECTION_INFO in the
minified results. Probably worth verifying that is still true.
What I don't know is whether dead code is removed before renaming. I hope
so (and it makes sense to do it that way), otherwise the strings in
FLEXJS_REFLECTION_INFO may prevent renaming.
All that is part of Pay-as-you-go. A related goal is to make the "opt-in"
automatic. IOW, we don't want folks to have to set compiler options to
get features. They should come in as you use the APIs.
-Alex
On 9/28/16, 11:05 AM, "Greg Dove" <greg.d...@gmail.com> wrote:
> "reflection support could be opt-in (or opt-out)"
>
>On reflection (pun unintended) maybe that is not sensible, given it is
>baked in to the framework classes. If GCC does dead-code elimination,
>maybe
>that does the job anyhow.
>
>
>
>On Thu, Sep 29, 2016 at 7:02 AM, Greg Dove <greg.d...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Alex, I had also considered the same idea of doing the qualifiedName
>> splitting in the reflection data because I think you would reduce a lot
>>of
>> long string variation in the GCC release build simply by doing
>> 'org.apache.flex.'+'Package.'+'ClassName' etc
>>
>> Isn't using the reflection member definition names for access also
>>another
>> use that would qualify as 'dynamic' access? I am not sure if GCC can
>>make
>> the connection between the reflection data field names and the original
>> naming of the fields which is why we need @export on instance members
>>and
>> @expose on static members (without those it fails iirc).
>>
>> One option for the future might be to make Reflection support optional.
>>I
>> think we might still want FLEXJS_CLASS_INFO, but perhaps the rest of the
>> the reflection support could be opt-in (or opt-out). This alone could
>> reduce a lot of code for people who don't need that.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 29, 2016 at 6:17 AM, Alex Harui <aha...@adobe.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 9/28/16, 3:25 AM, "Harbs" <harbs.li...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> >I like this idea and would propose taking it one step further:
>>> >
>>> >Currently transpiled javascript has fully qualified class names for
>>> >pretty much everything. This is difficult for closure to minimize
>>> >completely. I’d really like to have some way to “export” class names
>>>as
>>> >well as “import” to define some compact name for packages. Based on my
>>> >playing around, this could save at least tens of KB of JS downloads.
>>>
>>> For sure, the amount of download for strings is a significant waste of
>>> bytes in most cases. However, I'm not sure we need to provide renaming
>>> controls for folks building FlexJS apps, at least not for the
>>>mainstream.
>>>
>>> AIUI, every public property and method in FlexJS is "exported" to
>>>prevent
>>> renaming for a few "just-in-case" reasons. First, a review of
>>>renaming:
>>>
>>> FlexJS uses the Google Closure Compiler to optimize/minify the output
>>>JS
>>> file. In doing so, GCC tries to renaming variables. For example,
>>>every
>>> FlexJS class has a FLEXJS_CLASS_INFO property on it. Google might
>>>rename
>>> that property to just "a", so the original JS might look like:
>>>
>>> UIBase.prototype.FLEXJS_CLASS_INFO = {..};
>>>
>>> But GCC will cause that to look like:
>>>
>>> UIBase.prototype.a = {..};
>>>
>>> If you replace "FLEXJS_CLASS_INFO" with "a" in every FlexJS class, you
>>>can
>>> save quite a bit of download size. But then, what happens if someone
>>> writes code that looks like:
>>>
>>> var foo:Object = someUIBase.FLEXJS_CLASS_INFO;
>>> var bar:Object = someUIBase["FLEXJS_CLASS_INFO"];
>>>
>>> For the first line, GCC will know to alter the code to look like:
>>>
>>> var foo:Object = someUIBase.a;
>>>
>>> And everything will work fine, but AIUI, GCC does not try to alter
>>>strings
>>> so it will not touch the "bar" code and that would fail at runtime
>>>since
>>> there is no longer a property called "FLEXJS_CLASS_INFO" on UIBase.
>>>
>>>
>>> But I think that GCC is now smart enough that if you actually have a
>>>line
>>> like the "bar" line, that will prevent GCC from renaming
>>> FLEXJS_CLASS_INFO. GCC might make an alias instead. GCC knows that
>>>the
>>> output must have the bytes for "FLEXJS_CLASS_INFO" once in order to
>>>honor
>>> the string literal, so it will create an alias like aa =
>>> "FLEXJS_CLASS_INFO" and then the code is output as:
>>>
>>> UIBase.prototype[aa] = {..};
>>> And
>>> var foo:Object = someUIBase[aa];
>>> var bar:Object = someUIBase[aa];
>>>
>>> IOW, GCC has a pretty good alias generator, which is why I don't think
>>>our
>>> tool chain needs to provide folks with the manual options to rename.
>>>We
>>> should just let GCC do its thing.
>>>
>>>
>>> So, AIUI, the reason we export every public thing isn't for the
>>>standard
>>> dynamic access case as shown above, but for two others (and related
>>> scenarios):
>>> -Dynamic access using generated strings
>>> -Binding expressions with "dot-paths"
>>>
>>> Dynamic access using generated strings are scenarios where you know
>>>that
>>> every property starts with "str_" and run code like:
>>>
>>> var foo:String = bar["str_" + i];
>>>
>>> GCC isn't smart enough to handle this.
>>>
>>> Dot-path Binding Expressions are where you want to use data binding to
>>> bind to "myModel.subObject.someProperty". GCC will just look at the
>>> entire string and since it doesn't match any property it will rename
>>> myModel and subObject and someProperty and the binding will fail at
>>> runtime.
>>>
>>> So, AIUI, we have huge string tables in our apps for these two cases
>>>even
>>> though 99% or even 100% of the time, your app isn't going to access
>>>those
>>> methods and properties in a way that GCC can't detect. So, before we
>>>add
>>> some user-controlled renaming, I think we should first explore a
>>>compiler
>>> option like -no-rename where you guarantee that your app doesn't use
>>> generated strings or dot-path binding expressions and we clear all the
>>> @exports out of the code before sending it to GCC.
>>>
>>> I'll bet somewhere in the framework we do use generated strings and
>>>will
>>> have to fix that up, but I think that should be doable. I think the
>>> compiler could also output string literals with "." in them as separate
>>> strings and that might solve the dot-path problem. IOW, instead of
>>>simply
>>> outputting "myModel.subObject.someProperty", the compiler would output:
>>>
>>> "myModel" + "." + "subObject" + "." + "someProperty"
>>>
>>> I've also seen information that indicates we might be able to control
>>>or
>>> provide hints to GCC about what it can rename such that a smarter
>>>FalconJX
>>> could look for dynamic access and tell GCC not to rename properties in
>>> classes it knows will be dynamically accesses and let GCC rename
>>> everything else.
>>>
>>> Volunteers are welcome to do more research on leveraging and
>>>controlling
>>> GCC renaming. I haven't made it a high priority for me.
>>>
>>> My 2 cents,
>>> -Alex
>>>
>>>
>>
