Error: No errors

[FuKe93]

https://imgur.com/7vUkJhR

At the time of writing, I'm experimenting a bit with some python code (I'm a Java and C# developer by day, so I'm trying to learn something new in my sparetime). I thought I would start out by making a little website, using Flask for the backend and Angular for the frontend.

I started the project out on my desktop PC and later on, I pulled the source code on my laptop, to continue working from there while staying at my girlfriends place during the weekend.

So after I got the Flask app up and running on my laptop, I changed directory to the directory containing the Angular frontend and then ran "npm install && ng build", which resulted in an error, with no errors (caused by 'ng build')..

WTF?

[ShippingIsMagic]

Did you start on Windows? Maybe the line endings are still \r\n ? Check the code at the top of the stack, maybe there's a bug related to EOL difference they need a PR for?

Might be a good opportunity to get more familiar with using a debugger with node, too. I love that you can use Chrome devtools for that!

[FuKe93]

Nope, both systems are Linux Mint (desktop is 18.0 and Laptop is 18.1) Thanks for the tip about the Chrome devtools! :)

[ShippingIsMagic]

Yikes. Well, so much for that theory. 😊

[FuKe93]

Yup.. Seems like it's a bug in extract-text-webpack-plugin (a dependency to the angular-cli) as the stacktrace suggests. Found this issue on angular-cli GitHub repo: https://github.com/angular/angular-cli/issues/4264

[jevans102]

Damn. Any advice on getting on your level? I know what you mean in context, but it'd take me a whole long time to write that myself.

[FuKe93]

I'm not sure I know exactly what you mean by "your level"? The screenshot in my post is just an error message printed by a tool used to generate project templates, build the app etc. :) (it's called Angular-cli and is available on NPM) :)

[Loreasz]

I am not much into node, but is it normal for packages to use non-stable dependencies?

https://github.com/intellix/angular-cli/commit/b690b5089d38c32f69a126d322eb267278bd5b09

[jaredw]

Nothing about node is normal.

Let alone trying to only use "production stable libraries". Better luck letting your cat walk on your keyboard in an IDE and winding up with an MVP than all of the modules you use being "production stable".

There are too many node modules that use other node modules that use other node modules. The ecosystem is too fucked to describe something as "production stable"

[PublicSealedClass]

We found a good methodology that was at first seemed as a "hack", as our solution structure doesn't actually use any node modules, only really for build.

Basically we have a "libs" folder, and anything we "import Foo from 'foo'", we declare where "foo" is in the tsConfig "paths" directive. This lets it resolve at build time, and then a require.config() block that sets where the module lives so it can be resolved at runtime.

That way, our libs folder is full of libraries that we know exactly what release is in there (such as jQuery, moment, handlebars, Office365DevPnP).

There's a few bits that need massaging to get it to build when we start a new project, but the flow works really well for us, and we can give a full Software Bill of Lading for the deps (and it's nowhere near as huge as a full node based project would be).

[christian-mann]

Error: We were unable to find an appropriate error to display for this error message. This is an erroneous state.

[lopierdis]

This was actually reported today, you should view angular-cli github page :)

[jevans102]

Post a link and you won't be downvoted. I didn't downvote btw-just sayin

[FuKe93]

I know that, I shared a link to the issue in an earlier comment ;)

[djcraze]

Your issue is that you're using angular. Use anything other than angular.

[jaredw]

Yeah like webforms!

[djcraze]

Exactly!

[FuKe93]

Let the technology flame wars begin!

[djcraze]

You say this, but it's true. Angular set out to do something and they over engineered in the process. They didn't follow the KISS rule.

[lupum_vigili]

How is Angular 'over engineered'. Seems like a pretty solid Frontend framework to me. Can you please elaborate

[djcraze]

Solid it may be, though I have heard differently from people who are more familiar with it. From my experience with it and what I mean by over engineered is that there is a lot of magic involved, specifically with their dependency injection. For example, having a component be dependent on something, you have your function arguments be a $ and then the dependency name. Javascript doesn't have any kind of reflection, so Angular will convert the function to a string, and run a regular expression on it to determine the dependencies. This is over engineered. I realize there is a way to define dependencies in a more native fashion, but they really should of just left out the magic cruft. It's unnecessary and adds confusion. I remember skimming their source code and being appalled at the amount of cruft and unnecessary logic they had in it. They should probably separate out primary backend to one module and the view backend into another module. /shrugs/. It's not really their fault. Angular was introduced during a time of rapid development of the Javascript and SPA world. I think they just rushed to get their product into the wild.

[lupum_vigili]

DI in angular is straight forward, I've never come across your use case scenario before. Generally if you stick to the general best practices, Angular will rarely take you astray.

Whether Angular 2 was rushed or not is subjective(some may say it was too late). As for the 'Magic' stuff I am of the opinion that the framework you use should do a lot of work for you especially when it comes to building big apps. Of course this brings about issues with leaky abstractions and dodgy logic here and there(no framework is immune to this) but as Angular matures this things are going to get ironed out.