In addition to a collection of plugins, StealJS is comprised of two main components:

• steal: an extensible, universal module loader.
• steal-tools: utilities for building, transforming, and exporting module formats.

This is the steal repository. For the tools, see https://github.com/stealjs/steal-tools.

steal is unique because it can load JavaScript modules defined in ES6, AMD, and CommonJS formats (unlike most other module loaders, which only support one of these formats at a time).

In JavaScript, the word "modules" refers to small units of independent, reusable code. They are the foundation of many JavaScript design patterns, and can look like this in ES6:

export function hello() {
  console.log('hello');
}
export function goodbye() {
  console.log('goodbye');
}

Or like this in AMD:

define([], function() {
  return {
    hello: function() {
      console.log('hello');
    },
    goodbye: function() {
      console.log('goodbye');
    }
  };
});

Or like this CommonJS:

function hello() {
  console.log('hello');
}
function goodbye() {
  console.log('goodbye');
}
module.exports = {
  hello: hello,
  goodbye: goodbye
}

All of these formats are supported by steal, so you can mix and match modules in your project:

// ES6
import { hello, goodbye } from  "greetings";

// AMD
define(["greetings"],function(greetings){ ... });

// CommonJS
var hello = require('greetings').hello;
var goodbye = require('greetings').goodbye;

Additionally, plugins make it possible to load ANY module type you might come up with, such as Less or CSS. Anyone can write a plugin for steal to extend it's core module-loading functionality.

The StealJS organization maintains popular plugins that extend and enhance the module-loading capabilities of steal (and, subsequently, steal-tools) such as:

• CSS
• Less
• Conditional
• Mocha
• QUnit

For example, the Less plugin allows Less files to be loaded similarly to JavaScript modules:

// ES6
import "style.less";

// AMD
define(["style.less"],function(){ ... });

// CommonJS
require("style.less");

// steal
steal("style.less")

Looking to create a plugin for another format? See Writing Plugins.

For more information on StealJS, visit StealJS.com.

For information on contributing and developing, see the Contributing Guide on StealJS.com.