Montage Require (aka mr)

This is a CommonJS module system, highly compatible with NodeJS, intended for front-end development of web applications using npm style packages. It is designed to be automatically replaced by the Montage Optimizer with a smaller, faster and bundled production module system.

Mr is installed as a package in your application using npm:

$ npm init                  # if you don't already have a package.json
$ npm install --save mr

In an HTML file next to your package.json add the Mr script and provide a module to load:

<script src="node_modules/mr/bootstrap.js" data-module="index"></script>

Start writing your code in index.js, using the require function as you would in Node. Have a look at the demo for working example.

You can place your package.json in a different location, or avoid having one at all, with other script tag attributes.

Optimization

Take a look at Mop, the Montage Optimizer to optimize applications for production. The optimizer can bundle packages with all of the dependent modules, can preload bundles of progressive enhancements in phases, and can generate HTML5 application cache manifests.

Documentation

Mr is compatible with Node and npm, although there are some differences.

There is documentation for:

• package.json properties
• require function
• module object
• The package config object

And you may be interested in an in-depth look at how Mr works.

Compatibility

At present, Mr depends on document.querySelector and probably several other recent EcmaScript methods that might not be available in legacy browsers. With your help, I intend to isolate and fix these bugs.

At time of writing, tests pass in Chrome 21, Safari 5.1.5, and Firefox 13 on Mac OS 10.6.

Maintenance

Tests are in the spec directory. Use npm test to run the tests in NodeJS or open spec/run.html in a browser.

To run the tests in your browser, simply use npm run test:jasmine.

To run the tests using Karma use npm run test:karma and for continious tests run with file changes detection npm run test:karma-dev.

About

This implementation is a part from Motorola Mobility’s Montage web application framework. The module system was written by Tom Robinson and Kris Kowal. Motorola holds the copyright on much of the original content, and provided it as open source under the permissive BSD 3-Clause license. This project is maintained by Kris Kowal and Stuart Knightley, continuing with that license.