TKO (“Technical Knockout”)
TKO houses the monorepo of Knockout.
Getting Started
To install use one of the usual package managers e.g.
- $
yarn add @tko/build.reference - $
npm install @tko/build.reference
Over CDN
- Reference Build: https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@tko/build.reference@4.0.0-alpha8/dist/build.reference.min.js
Knockout Build
The Knockout build has some backwards compatibility that is not in the reference build. See the build differences, here: https://tko.io/3to4
It's available as @tko/build.knockout, and over CDN:
- Knockout Build https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@tko/build.knockout@4.0.0-alpha8/dist/build.knockout.min.js
Using the Monorepo
| Command | Effect |
|---|---|
$ git clone git@github.com:knockout/tko
|
Clone the repository. |
$ npm install -g yarn otherwise |
Ensure yarn is globally available |
$ yarn
|
Install local node packages and link tko modules |
$ yarn test
|
Run all tests. See below. |
$ yarn watch
|
Run all tests and watch for changes. See below. |
$ yarn build
|
Build tko[.module][.es6][.min].js files, where .es6 version has not been transpiled |
$ lerna publish
|
Bump versions and publish to npm registry |
Checkout package.json => scripts for more commands that can be executed with yarn {command}.
In each individual packages/*/ directory, you can also run (presuming rollup and karma are installed globally):
| Command | Effect |
|---|---|
$ karma COMMAND ../../karma.conf.js [--once]
|
Test the local package, where COMMAND is e.g. start or run
|
$ rollup -c ../../rollup.config.js
|
Build the package into the local dist/
|
Testing with yarn test and yarn watch
The yarn test and yarn watch commands can be used in the root directory, where it will run across all tests, or alternatively in any packages/*/ directory to run tests
specific to that package.
Optional arguments to yarn test include:
-
--sauce— use Sauce Labs to test a variety of platforms; requires an account at Sauce Labs andSAUCE_USERNAMEandSAUCE_ACCESS_KEYto be set in the environment. -
--noStartConnect— Do not start a new Sauce Connect proxy instance for every test; requires that Sauce Connect be already running.
visual.html
Note that running karma or rollup will create a visual.html file that shows the proportional size of imports into each package.
Objectives
TKO aims to become a base for future versions of Knockout. The objectives include:
- Modularization into ES6 and separate projects, with compilation using an ES6 compiler like Rollup. This solves several problems with Knockout, including:
- Some folks want to roll-their-own with e.g. removing components
- Compilation is now with Closure compiler, which is actually transliterating – meaning the debug and minified versions have different code paths (mostly in the form of things exposed in debug being missing in the minified version)
- The compilation of Knockout is just concatenation, leading to difficulties with maintainance, severance, and replacement
- Documentation inline in the source code. This aims to make it easier to document, by making documentation adjacent to the code about-which it speaks. Also, we aim to have examples in the documentation.
- A more comprehensive home page. The hope is to have something fun and fancy, and we have a rough prototype.
- Better setup for plugins. The problems with Knockout include:
- There's no central, searchable repository for knockout
- What should be simple plugins (e.g. binding handlers or providers) are complex, including:
- Built-ins have first-class access to quite a bit of good Knockout code, but plugins generally have second-class access and often have to duplicate Knockout internals
- Quality plugins have lots of boilerplate for compilation, release, documentation, and testing
Next steps
There's an issue for that.
License
MIT license - http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php.
