What do you use to minimize and compress JavaScript libraries? [closed]

Answer 1

I've used YUI Compressor for a long time and have had no problems with it, but have recently started using Google Closure Compiler and had some success with it. My impressions of it so far:

• It generally outperforms YUI Compressor in terms of file size reduction. By a small amount on simple mode, and by a lot on advanced mode.
• Simple mode has so far been as reliable as YUI Compressor. Nothing I've fed it has shown any problems.
• Advanced "compilation" mode is great for some scripts, but the dramatic size reduction of your script comes at the expense of a lot of meddling with your code that stands a decent chance of breaking it. There are ways to deal with some of these problems and understanding what it's doing can go a long way to avoiding problems but I generally avoid using this mode.

I've moved over to using Google Closure Compiler in simple "compilation" mode, because it slightly outperforms YUI Compressor in general. I have used it considerably less than I have YUI Compressor but from what I've seen so far I'd recommend it.

One other that I've yet to try but sounds promising is Mihai Bazon's UglifyJS.

Answer 2

Dean Edward's packer achieves some pretty good compression ratios. It has command line implementations which allows it to be used in a continuous integration process.

Answer 3

http://code.google.com/p/jsmin-php/

Good old Doug Crockford :-) The beauty of this is that with cache control you can get somelovely automated compression only when it is required. Or in one of my projects I just output the compressed/gzipped files and delete them when I make a change. For a development environment, I just dont' call the minification script.

Answer 4

I use a simple (3-4 line) wrapper script around JavaScript::Minifier::XS.

Answer 5

https://jawr.dev.java.net/ is excellent for minification and versioning

Answer 6

I too use YUI Compressor. I have an ant task like this that I use in my projects:

<!--
YUI Compressor tasks 
http://www.julienlecomte.net/yuicompressor/README
-->
<property name="yuicompressor.jar"
           value="C:/devlibs/yuicompressor-2.2.4/build/yuicompressor-2.2.4.jar"/>

<target name="js.compress">
    <!-- Create min directory under js direcrtory if it doesnt exist -->
    <mkdir dir="${js-directory}/min" />

    <apply verbose="true" executable="java" parallel="false" failonerror="true">
        <fileset dir="${js-directory}" includes="*.js"/>
        <arg line="-jar"/>
        <arg path="${yuicompressor.jar}"/>
        <srcfile/>
        <arg line="-o"/>
        <mapper type="glob" from="*.js" to="${js-directory}/min/*-min.js"/>
        <targetfile/>
    </apply>
</target>