what I don't like is that their solution is still dependent of the file date of the script and all its dependencies. While usually accurate, file dates can be misleading, not to mention the performance hit of doing stat() on all the related files.
I'm using quite the same thing here, but I'm doing the compilation step manually, but also combining all the JS files into one big minified one.
The templating engine always uses that combined file if it's available (one stat call). If not, it uses the non-combined versions (useful for development)
> what I don't like is that their solution is still dependent of the file date of the script and all its dependencies. While usually accurate, file dates can be misleading
I'm curious what you mean by that. File dates are what "make" and all the other builders are built upon. If they weren't to be trusted then you could never compile programs correctly...
> not to mention the performance hit of doing stat() on all the related files.
The thing is stats are really really fast. Check onedognight's benchmark above (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=800778). On my server I get 1.6 million stats per second.
I'm using quite the same thing here, but I'm doing the compilation step manually, but also combining all the JS files into one big minified one.
The templating engine always uses that combined file if it's available (one stat call). If not, it uses the non-combined versions (useful for development)