Ship a version of Firechat without the UI

[oddui]

I'd like to use firechat.js without the ui. So can we not ignore the src folder in bower.json? Thanks.

[jwngr]

Sounds like this is a request to ship a version of Firechat without the UI stuff included. I don't think the solution is to include the src/ directory in Bower. Instead, if we decide to do this, we should actually add a new file to the dist/ directory.

Leaving this open for further discussion.

[oddui]

It would be nice to have the source files through bower and npm. I'm not sure why not just expose the source files.

[jwngr]

Because source files aren't meant to be distributed to end users. In many cases (not for Firechat, but for other Firebase open source repos), source files require a compilation step to be usable by all end users. For example, source files may be written in ES2015 and complied to ES5. If we released source files, any user without an ES2015 compliant browser would see errors. This is a pretty standard practice. I think your request for having a version of Firechat without the UI is a valid request, but we should do it properly. Exposing the source files is not the right way to do that.

[oddui]

@jwngr i thought this is a lib for developers, if that's what you mean end users.

I can understand if it's standard practice for Firebase open source repo not to release source files. But lots of other open source projects do release compiled versions and source files and i find them more flexible to use for my needs, i may just target es2015 environments and don't like compiled es5.

Anyway feel free to do what you think is right.

[jwngr]

When I said "end users," I meant users who interact with apps built using Firechat. So, not the developers who built those app, but the developers' end users. Sorry for the confusion. And thanks for the feedback. I'll discuss with the team and see where we land.

[MaxPleaner]

On npmjs.com page for this package, it says it can be installed with npm install firechat.

The readme doesn't show this usage, though, and it seems like it's not able to get loaded through require. It complains about not having a document available.

TypeError: Cannot read property 'document' of undefined
    at module.exports (/home/max/Desktop/project/firechat_app/node_modules/jquery/dist/jquery.js:30:12)

Maybe it should be explicitly said that this is not able to be loaded by require in the readme.