Introducing Closure Tools

http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2009/11/introducing-closure-tools.html

by txxxxd • 17 years ago

190 69 17 years ago

googlecode.blogspot.com

rbarr• 17 years ago

What an unfortunate name. Perhaps, in the confusion, it will help to actually promote Rich Hickey's wonderful work.

bockris• 17 years ago

I'm with you. I totally read Closure as Clojure.

freakwit• 17 years ago

I totally read read as read.

frognibble• 17 years ago

It was called Closure before Rich announced Clojure to the world.

flatline• 17 years ago

"Closure" being a general concept in programming, I always disliked the name "Clojure". Same thing as Google Chrome, everyone is now confused when you talk about browser chrome as a general thing.

ynniv• 17 years ago

Thats a terrible argument... He did indeed "announce Clojure to the world" before Google did, and now we all associate the phonetic name with him. Treat "closure" as a project name and pick a different product name, Google.

gojomo• 17 years ago

Even without the near-collision with 'Clojure', the full-collision with the 'closure' concept is problematic. They should prepend or append a 'G' or 'JS' for clarity (to both humans and indexers). EG:

GClosure, JSClosure, ClosureG, or ClosureJS

notaddicted• 17 years ago

I'm getting disillusioned with software naming. Everyone wants a cool name that's fun to say, but all the names mean other things too, and quite a few don't describe the project very well.

petercooper• 17 years ago

Despite the closeness in name, aren't they pronounced differently? I've always pronounced "Clojure" with a hard "j," rather than like "closure."

Edit: Turns out soft "j" is order of the day, there's a whole discussion about it: http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/browse_thread/thread/... - so confusion can continue to reign ;-)

jimbokun• 17 years ago

"Clozure" is taken as well.

http://www.clozure.com/clozurecl.html

Any other consonants that can be shoe-horned into that slot?

bokchoi• 17 years ago

Clo-de-jour?

Confusion• 17 years ago

I think most of the intended audience will not find 'Closure' confusing, because they are unaware of the concept that already has that name.

The overlap of people interested in Clojure and people interested in Closure is rather small.

caffeine2• 17 years ago

The overlap of people interested in Clojure and people interested in Closure is rather small.

This entire thread is evidence against that point.

jamesbritt• 17 years ago

"I think most of the intended audience will not find 'Closure' confusing, because they are unaware of the concept that already has that name."

Pretty sad to expect that so many people working with JavaScript will not know what a closure is.

Not that you're wrong; I honestly don't know, but would hope things aren't so bad.

Sandman• 17 years ago

This is indeed an unfortunate name. The word 'closure' was, at first, used to describe a concept in programming: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closure_(computer_science). Then Clozure and Clojure came along. Now, I can see how these two are related to the aforementioned concept, but I simply can't see what these 'Closure tools' have to do with the concept of closures. Yet the name would suggest that they do. Is there anybody from Google that would care to explain?

Elfan3• 17 years ago

Note that the word closure has meaning in set theory and other areas of mathematics relevant to computer science. SICP explicitly avoids using what wikipedia calls a 'computer science closure' for this reason.

blasdel3• 17 years ago

It's not quite as bad as PrototypeJS -- the most ironically named library ever. The whole point of it is to force Class-based bullshit onto the only pure Prototype-based language anyone uses. It's named after the concept it's designed explicitly to stamp out.

So depressing.

aboodman• 17 years ago

Picking a name for a software project is one of the few areas where a developer gets to kick loose and be completely creative, and even fanciful.

Personally, I love picking names that recast old words in a new way, and think Closure is a great name for this project.

caffeine2• 17 years ago

Why is it called Closure? Does it close stuff? Does it pass functions and bindings? What could possibly have inspired them to use this particular name?

jurjenh• 17 years ago

I suspect the confusion will only affect people that don't need the specific implementations...

People that want Closure for their JS goodness will know which it is, similarly for Clojure and Clozure lisps. And I generally search out new tools by description rather than name, so the naming issue becomes more of a marketing issue than anything else, and given the name space, it does seem a relatively hot area at the moment...

At least they didn't go for something like GJST...

jbyers• 17 years ago

For one of our JS bundles it's a substantial improvement over YUI's Compressor.

Original: 459220

YUI: 241920

Google: 209929 -- 13% improvement

YUI + gz: 66164

Google + gz: 61297 -- 7% improvement

Caught a few non-fatal syntax errors too. We serve hundreds of thousands of those a day, so that's already committed to our tree and on the way to testing.

lpolovets• 17 years ago

Here's another data point:

I downloaded jquery-1.3.2.js and jquery-1.3.2.min.js from http://docs.jquery.com/Downloading_jQuery#Current_Release

> wc -c jquery-1.3.2.js

120763

> wc -c jquery-1.3.2.min.js

57254

> java -jar compiler.jar --js jquery-1.3.2.js | wc -c

55340

Using Google's compiler saves an additional 4% over the existing minified version

(disclosure: I used to work for Google)

jeresig• 17 years ago

I definitely plan on switching jQuery over to using this compressor - excited by the output. However it appears as if it crashes when you push the latest nightlies of jQuery in. Not sure what's up with that.

phren0logy• 17 years ago

I'm pretty sure this is what Steve Yegge was talking about on the most recent StackOverflow podcast he was in.

If that is accurate, it's a JavaScript compiler that supports a way of partially compiling to allow very tight integration with an IDE (or editor). Yegge's point was that an IDE or editor should not have to re-invent the wheel and a compiler should be able to provide sophisticated feedback about syntax, objects, variables, scope, etc.

Cool to see it out in the wild.

lupin_sansei2• 17 years ago

Yes here's the link http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/podcast-50/

Elfan3• 17 years ago

Using this code on the code here (except for processing.js): http://github.com/cburroughs/minification-compare/tree/maste...

Latest full release of yuicompressor vs closure at SIMPLE_OPTIMIZATIONS level:

  ----- TOTALS -----
  base:  yui-compressor-2.4.2
  ('abs diff:', '768050', 'gz: ', '184071')
  ('% change: ', -0.56976157623774126, 'gz: ',   -0.51009685330672982)
  challenger: closure-compiler
  ('abs diff:', '814830', 'gz: ', '193817')
  ('% change: ', -0.60446432545511197, 'gz: ', -0.53710493134361448)

justinhj• 17 years ago

So now there is Clozure common lisp, Clojure for the JVM, and now Closure.

I was already getting the first two mixed up.

DannoHung• 17 years ago

I am never going to be able to refer to an actual closure again and have anyone understand what I'm talking about, am I?

harto• 17 years ago

I already find that hard enough - I've found that people tend to conflate first-class functions with closures.

raju• 17 years ago

Upvoted for two reasons - Making me laugh out loud, and for letting me know that I am not the only one getting confused.

Other commentators have mentioned the confusion with Rich's Clojure, and despite Rich's stand that is be pronounced like you would pronounce "closure", I usually still say it with the emphasis on the "J", esp. to Lisp-savvy folks.

[On a side note, and I am nitpicking here, but it's just Clojure, vs Clojure for the JVM, considering Clojure for the CLR is very close to 1.0]

gruseom3• 17 years ago

Would anyone who already knows this tool, or is taking the time to learn it, care to explain what they mean by "compiles web apps down into compact, high-performance JavaScript"? I assume this is a JS-to-JS translator. How exactly are they transforming the JS?

I mean, of course, besides the obvious things they mention: minification, removing dead code, and some error checking.

seiji3• 17 years ago

Take a look here: http://code.google.com/closure/compiler/docs/api-tutorial3.h...

When you turn on advanced mode they do automatic inlining, variable substitution, and they don't respect the globalness of anything unless you specifically force something to be global.

YUI Compressor assumes anything not in a function is global, so it won't rename top level objects. Closure in advanced mode will trample through your globals and property names like rhinos mating in a field of daises.

lupin_sansei2• 17 years ago

I get concerned that these minimisers and js to js compilers will introduce subtle bugs and changes into the behaviour of my code. Is that concern warranted?

niels• 17 years ago

I've been curious about some of the tools behind Google's javascript power. The Closure Library coupled with the compiler looks really useful for creating complex and fast web apps.

slig• 17 years ago

It took me a while to figure this out, but there's a lot more than "just" a js compiler. Since nobody here commented about it, I guess I'm not the only one that didn't see it.

We can now use all the google fancy widgets (from gmail, gdocs, etc). Check this: http://closure-library.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/closure/goog...

xal• 17 years ago

I think there is way to much attention on the compiler. It's neat but not that big of a deal. The key here is that they released their widget library. Tons of great stuff with very high code quality. This also includes the document editor from google docs which is by leaps and bounds the best engineered WYSIWYG editor out there.

leif2• 17 years ago

Wow, I have been seriously missing this outside google-land. So happy it's released; it's a fantastic set of tools, even if you only use the compiler as a glorified lint.

fortes• 17 years ago

Given your experience with the tool, any tips or best practices?

I already use lint in my build system, this looks like a good companion as well.

leif2• 17 years ago

IIRC, the framework is largely based on dojo, so if you're familiar with that you'll have an easier time getting used to it.

Don't remember many specifics, I just remember liking it. Good luck!

Elfan3• 17 years ago

How many lint-like tools use a full AST? pylint yes, but I doubt the original did.

leej2• 17 years ago

i DONT get this attitude of Google. even MS uses jquery but the open source king Google do not. is this so hard to improve upon Firefox or Ubuntu or even much less complex jquery?

jonknee• 17 years ago

Google uses (and hosts free for everyone) jQuery. You can even use their new compiler to get a smaller version of jQuery. The widget library has some overlap with jQuery, but does so much more and has been in progress since well before jQuery UI (Google bought Writely in March 2006 and jQuery UI didn't come out until September 2007).

leej2• 17 years ago

MS uses and hosts free too. what is your point? i'm talking about progressing current successful open source projects. fyi, its library has overlap with jquery core too!

nostrademons• 17 years ago

Closure existed well before JQuery did.

It's non-trivial to switch an existing system over to a new JS library. I tried most recently last month, but there're a bunch of engineering constraints that made it apparent, even to me, that it was a bad idea.

JQuery is still used a lot for prototyping, where we don't face these engineering constraints.

asher• 17 years ago

This is wonderful news; I'm really grateful to Google for opening this.

We already knew that Google's major javascript apps were not using GWT. I always had reservations about GWT because I think javascript is a very nice language. (Just the language - not necessarily the DOM or implementations).

While java seems like a step backwards.

The main thing missing from javascript is some stricter checking, and it looks like Closure Tools provides this.

Introducing Closure Tools

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