lively.modules

JavaScript package and module system for interactive development.

Module and package system

Live and interactive devlopment

Goals

lively.modules provides a framework for loading, defining and interactively modifying JavaScript modules. A module is an entity containing JavaScript source code that adheres to the definition of the ECMAScript Language Specification.

For an intro to the topic see ES6 In Depth: Modules at mozilla.org

Its main purpose is to

• Provide an interface to load modules and groups of modules (packages)
• Provide an interface to access and modify the runtime state of a module, i.e. its
  • dependencies (modules imported and modules that import it)
  • imported and exported values
  • source code
  • internal definitions
• Provide a user friendly and practical implementation of how imported modules are resolved *.
• For the purpose of grouping modules together and providing a method for module lookup introduce a lightweight concept of a package.

* The ES specification explicitly leaves the semantics for "HostResolveImportedModule" open to module implementations

For more please see doc/rationale.md.

Usage

To load lively.modules you can use the pre-build dist/lively.modules-with-lively.vm.js file. Once that happens the lively.modules global will provide an interface for loading packages, modifying modules, evaluating source code in module contexts etc.

So on a webpage you would typically link via

<script src="../node_modules/lively.modules/dist/lively.modules-with-lively.vm.js"></script>

See the examples in lively-system-examples for more details.

API