In this post I'm going to write down my initial research on creating a Maven based toolset to develop Javascript intensive web applications. The guys at Codehaus already have a project with the same goal, and I've borrowed some ideas from them. His approach doesn't fit well with my needs, but you should take a look a it, maybe it works for you.
I've just started to scratch the surface and I don't address things like Javascript minifying, AMD and the like. These are the problems I've been working on
- Using a separate directory to store Javascript source and test files.
- Packaging Javascript libraries as Maven dependencies and using the Maven dependency mechanism to retrieve transitive dependencies.
- Including Javascript unit tests in the Maven builds
- Enabling rapid develop/test cycles
