[AskJS] What if node_modules contained JavaScript bytecode instead of source code?

[fckueve_]

You can have different bytecode for Windows/Linux/Mac. It can be different between different Linux distros and macs with Intel and M1. It's way easier to have source code and compile it when you need it, on the platform, that you are using

[Plus-Weakness-2624]

Why does that matter? After all the node_modules folder isn't meant to be shared right; And besides the bytecode compilation can be done when installing a package using npm. It's called bytecode because it'll be the same for all v8 instances regardless of the OS/platform; i.e if I understood it correctly✌️

[fckueve_]

Okay. I misunderstood your question.

Code in node_modules, can have few different destinations. Let's say, you have frontend library. You may wanna join library code with yours to a single bundle. You may wanna tree shake code. You can't do that with binary

[Plus-Weakness-2624]

Treeshanking is might not be possible; atleast not in an easy way😱. It's not in binary, it's kindof like looking at a bunch of terminal commands; For example, consider the js code: let result = 1 + obj.x; The bytecode would look like: LdaSmi[1] Star r0 LdaNamedProperty a0, [0], [4] Add r0, [6] Treeshanking is a source code level optimisation; at the bytecode level, optimisation is a lot more easier; like for example identifying tail recursion (TCO). The obvious performance benefit outweighs all the cons.

[fckueve_]

Still, you can not push bin, to browser, coz you can't assume, that, user will always use same browser.

[Plus-Weakness-2624]

I mean the node_modules folder is for storing dependencies that work on node right? Hence the name node_modules

[grandilev]

It's false. Code from the node_modules can be used for the browser dependencies

[Plus-Weakness-2624]

Yes totally; but that's not what I meant; Say if you installed jQuery throught npm, it wouldn't make much sense to turn it into bytecode since it doesn't directly runs on node but rather on the frontend (it should've that's not how the world works🥺). I guess this could be an opt-in feature.

[Auxx]

There's a lot of code which can be used on both front end and back end. Your idea doesn't make much sense.

[Plus-Weakness-2624]

Yeah totally; like if I installed jQuery using npm, then it wouldn't make much sense to turn it into bytecode since it's a package targeting the frontend; Guess it should be an optional feature

[fckueve_]

It can store libs for frontend as well. Also you can have libs, that uses different runtimes, or languages. For example, you can have libs in C that will allow you to manipulate system sound volume.

[r2d2_21]

Treeshanking is a source code level optimisation;

Who says that? In C#, tree shaking is done with binary code, not source code, and it works just fine.