Panel

Adam Hawkins (twitter github blog)
Jamison Dance (twitter github blog)
Joe Eames (twitter github blog)
Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up)

Discussion
 01:16 - Adam Hawkins Introduction

JavaScript Application Build Tools: Adam Hawkins
003 JSJ Build Tools

01:51 - What Are Build Tools?
 02:46 - Build Process

Ember.js
CoffeeScript
Sass
Grunt.js
Yeoman
RequireJS
minispade
jQuery

09:15 - Minification

Handlebars.js
barber

10:30 - Ruby on Rails

Client-Side Applications

16:43 - Chuck’s Build Process
 17:32 - Joe’s Build Process
 18:54 - Source Maps

Concatenation

24:09 - iridium

rake-pipeline
Brunch

32:56 - Recommendations for Building
 35:23 - Testing

QUnit

Picks

Sub Rosa (Jamison)
biggie (Jamison)
Kingdom Rush Frontiers (Joe)
The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson (Joe)
Ward Cunningham (Joe)
Speedtest.net (Chuck)
ThemeForest (Chuck)
Solo Piano Radio (Adam)
ConvertKit (Adam)
Staticly (Adam)

Next Week
 Transitioning to JavaScript
 Transcript

[Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at Bluebox.net.] 

[This episode is sponsored by Component One, makers of Wijmo. If you need stunning UI elements or awesome graphs and charts, then go to Wijmo.com and check them out.] 

[This podcast is sponsored by JetBrains, makers of WebStorm. Whether you’re working with Node.js or building the front end of your web application, WebStorm is the tool for you. It has great code quality and code exploration tools and works with HTML5, Node, TypeScript, CoffeeScript, Harmony, LESS, Sass, Jade, JSLint, JSHint, and the Google Closure Compiler. Check it out at JetBrains.com/WebStorm.]

CHUCK:  Hey everybody, and welcome to Episode 65 of the JavaScript Jabber Show. This week on our panel, we have Jamison Dance.

JAMISON:  Hello friends.

CHUCK:  Joe Eames.

JOE:  Hey there.

CHUCK:  I’m Charles Max Wood from DevChat.TV. And this week, we have a special guest, Adam Hawkins.

ADAM:  Hey, how you guys doing?

CHUCK:  Terrific. So, you want to introduce your self since you’re new to the show?

ADAM:  Yeah. My name is Adam Hawkins. I’m primarily a Ruby guy but have come to the JavaScript world through Ember and browser applications. I’ve been here now for about a year and a half and just learning as I go along,

CHUCK:  Nice. So anyway, you recommended that we talk about build tools and then you wrote a blog post about it. We talked about build tools, I think on Episode 2 or 3 or something. In your mind, what are build tools?

ADAM:  Well, I think a build tool is something that you need to create a JavaScript application. There is a distinction between, say maybe an application or something [inaudible] that needs CoffeeScript or something like that versus a full-blown application that runs on the browser which needs modules, asset pre-compilation, templates, all those sorts of stuff, and testing and things like that. So, on one end, you have build tools that simply do the compilation and the concatenation, and then you have other tools that aim to be like a whole development environment. So, there is a large spectrum and you just have to choose which you need, basically.

CHUCK:  What kind of a build process do you guys have on the projects that you work on?

ADAM:  Well, okay. My background is, we are building a CRM with Ember.js and we needed a lot of different things. Well, my team prefers to write in CoffeeScript and use Sass. So, we needed those two things right away. Then we needed module compilation and then also asset concatenation, minification, as well as environment support. We need to develop a certain code and then deploy a certain code and a few other things. So, it’s pretty complicated and we needed a tool to do that. Well, I wrote one after looking at what’s out there.

JAMISON:  So,

Special Guest: Adam Hawkins.