Velcro

Velcro is a suite of packages designed to allow resolving modules in any JavaScript context, from any source. Velcro provides to tools to build a graph of these modules and then flatten this graph into bundles or executable code.

✅ Why you might be interested in Velcro

Beyond beeing intrinsically interesting for the challenges it faces and the approaches taken to address these, there are a number of reasons why you might be interested in Velcro.

1. You would like to run code in the browser but you can't predict the structure, or dependencies of that code. Velcro can help combine dynamic code with NPM modules coming from a CDN like unpkg.com or jsDelivr.com.
2. You would like to bundle some code with NPM dependencies but do not have access to a filesystem or do not want to run npm install.
3. You would like to resolve modules and read their content from a CDN like unpkg.com or jsDelivr.com in a way that respects the Node Module Resolution Algorithm. This might be interesting if, for example, you wanted to load TypeScript definition files to seed something like the monaco-editor.
4. You want to build tooling that requires access to a module dependency graph. For example, you might want to show the set of files in a dependency graph and their inter-dependencies.

🗺 Velcro module resolution

Velcro starts from the principle that we cannot assume anything about the environment in which it runs (beyond that it has some baseline JavaScript primitives). Given this assumption, it follows that we cannot rely on having access to tools like npm or even a filesystem.

Without a file system, Velcro takes the stance that all source modules (files) should be addressable by a canonical url. In a world where modules are identified by urls, Velcro can allow situations where some files come from an in-memory memory:///index.js scheme, others from the filesystem at file:///index.js and yet others can come from a CDN like unpkg.com at https://unpkg.com/react@16.13.1/index.js.

Typically, the transition from one url scheme to another happens at the 'bare module' boundary. A bare module boundary is when one module expresses a dependency on something that is neither a relative nor absolute path. In Velcro, for example, a common pattern is to use the CompoundStrategy to join the CdnStrategy to something like the FsStrategy or MemoryStrategy strategies.

Example:

const cdnStrategy = CdnStrategy.forJsDelivr(readUrlFunction);
const memoryStrategy = new MemoryStrategy({
  '/index.js': 'module.exports = require("react");',
  '/package.json': JSON.stringify({
    name: '@@velcro/execute',
    version: '0.0.0',
    dependencies: {
      react: '^16.13.0',
    },
  }),
});
const compoundStrategy = new CompoundStrategy({ strategies: [cdnStrategy, memoryStrategy] });

As you can see, Velcro relies heavily on implementations of the ResolverStrategy interface to perform its functions. The design of the ResolverStrategy interface is such that it should be easy to compose.

You may, for example, write a caching strategy that sits behind a compound strategy but in front of a 'slow' strategy like a CDN. This caching strategy would be able to serve cache hits from cache and delegate misses to the child, CDN strategy.

Different resolver strategies can be composed together so that the final, top-level strategy that you pass to the Resolver has the exact behaviour you are looking for.

🕸 Dependency graph

Since we have something that can resolve modules and read their code, from any source, and from any JavaScript runtime, we have all the tools we need to build build out a graph of modules.

Velcro's @velcro/bundler package does exactly that. It takes some configuration settings and a Resolver that has been instantiated with a ResolverStrategy and is able to efficiently build out the dependency graph between modules.

The bundler is unusual in that since there is no npm, no yarn, no pnpm or any such tool it cannot rely on something else composing npm modules into a node_modules tree. Instead, it contains logic to parse each file to identify that file's dependencies so that the graph building can continue.

What is really interesting, is that since Velcro is a tightly-integrated system, it was build so that we can obtain a record of every file and directory that was consulted to resolve file B from file A. Each edge in the graph therefore contains a record of all logical files or directories that, if changed, would invalidate that edge. This allows Velcro's bundler to be designed to react efficiently, accurately -- and more importantly -- minimally to changes.

Similarly, if a resolver strategy was designed to transpile files on the fly, that strategy could indicate to the graph builder which files were consulted to generate the transpiled output. Changes to these files would then invalidate the file's node (not the edge).

📦 Bundling

With a module dependency graph in hand, it is not a huge leap to be able to serialize that graph into executable form. Why not?

Hey! Let's build a browser-native JavaScript bundler!

The @velcro/bundler module can take a graph build using the buildGraph() function and split it into different logical chunks. You can provide your own heuristic for allocating files to chunks or you can let Velcro happily dump everything into a single Chunk.

A Chunk is a subset of the overall dependency graph. To serialize it, different methods are available to produce a Build from the chunk. A Build has methods to output the combined code according to the format chosen when building the chunk.

Oh, and did I forget to mention that source-maps are tracked the whole way through? In the browser? OF COURSE!

The source map for a build can be produced in one of several formats via getters on the Build instance.

🔌 Plugins

Velcro bundling can be customized by providing a list of plugins to the Bundler. A plugin is an object with a name: string property and that implements any of the following hooks:

• resolveEntrypoint(ctx, uri) => { uri, rootUri } | undefined: Resolve a file reference passed as one of the entrypoints to buildGraph. Note: This API may change to accept a string spec instead of a Uri. This hook will be run sequentially for each plugin until the first one resolves a value.
• resolveDependency(ctx, dependency, fromModule): { uri, rootUri } | undefined: Resolve a dependency from an already-resolved source module. This may be a relative or absolute (?) Uri and may also be a bare module specifier. This allows a plugin to, for example, override the default resolution to inject (or mock) any dependency. This hook will be run sequentially for each plugin until the first one resolves a value.
• load(ctx, uri): { code } | undefined: Given a resolved entrypoint or dependency, this hook allows a plugin to override how the code is loaded for a given Uri. This hook will be run sequentially for each plugin until the first one resolves a value.
• transform(ctx, uri, code): { code, sourceMap } | undefined: Having loaded the code at a given Uri, this hook allows a plugin to provide custom logic to transform the loaded code into JavaScript. Note that the resulting JavaScript must be a CommonJS module. This hook will be run sequentially for all Plugins that provide it with the output of one feeding into the input of the next.

Any hook may optionally return a Promise for the specified result signature.

For details on the signature of each of these methods, please consult the API docs for plugins.

✨ Magic

With this sort of pattern, different components can be composed to provide higher-level, opinionated tools like the @velcro/runner.

The runner is barely distinguishable from magic.

Given some code you want to run and the npm dependencies it might have, the runner will:

1. Create a Resolver with a combination of the MemoryStrategy, the CdnStrategy and the CompoundStrategy.
2. Load the graph of modules implied by your code and its dependencies by using the Resolver.
3. Serialize the graph into an executable bundle an inject a Runtime.
4. Call the require method of the returned Runtime instance and return the exports of your code.

Let's review: the runner allows any code to be run anywhere with no pre-existing conditions except a 112 kB (minified) UMD bundle.

Resolver Strategy

The resolver strategy interface represents the minimal set of operations that allow Velcro to operate efficiently across a wide variety of conceptual backends. Implementing this interface is what allows modules to be resolved across different media.

getUrlForBareModule

Note: Not all strategies need to implement this. In practice, at least one does if you want to be able to resolve bare module specifiers like "react".

interface ResolverStrategy {
  /**
   * Produce a url given the components of a bare module specifier.
   *
   * @param ctx A `ResolverContext` that should be used for making calls to other strategy methods
   * @param name The name of a bare module
   * @param spec The optional `@version` of a bare module specifier
   * @param path The optional path at the end of the bare module specifier
   */
  getUrlForBareModule?(
    ctx: ResolverContext,
    name: string,
    spec: string,
    path: string
  ): MaybeThenable<ResolverStrategy.BareModuleResult>;
}

getCanonicalUrl

interface ResolverStrategy {
  /**
   * Determine the canonical uri for a given uri.
   *
   * For example, you might consider symlink targets their canonicalized path or you might
   * consider the canonicalized path of https://unpkg.com/react to be
   * https://unpkg.com/react@16.13.1/index.js.
   *
   * Dealing only in canonical uris means that anything produced from those can be cached.
   *
   * @param ctx A `ResolverContext` that should be used for making calls to other strategy methods
   * @param uri The uri to canonicalize
   */
  getCanonicalUrl(
    ctx: ResolverContext,
    uri: Uri
  ): MaybeThenable<ResolverStrategy.CanonicalizeResult>;
}

getResolveRoot

interface ResolverStrategy {
  /**
   * Get the logical resolve root for a given uri.
   *
   * For example, a filesystem-based strategy might consider the root to be `file:///`. Or,
   * if it was scoped to /home/filearts, the root might be `file:///home/filearts/`.
   *
   * Any uri that is not a 'child' of the resolve root should be considered out of scope for a given
   * strategy.
   *
   * @param ctx A `ResolverContext` that should be used for making calls to other strategy methods
   * @param uri The uri for which the logical resolve root uri should be found
   */
  getResolveRoot(ctx: ResolverContext, uri: Uri): MaybeThenable<ResolverStrategy.ResolveRootResult>;
}

getSettings

Note: Any strategy extending the AbstractResolverStrategy does not need to implement this method as default behaviour is provided.

interface ResolverStrategy {
  /**
   * Get the settings for a given uri
   *
   * This indirection allows resolver strategies to have per-strategy or even per-uri settings.
   *
   * @param ctx A `ResolverContext` that should be used for making calls to other strategy methods
   * @param uri The uri for which to load settings
   */
  getSettings(ctx: ResolverContext, uri: Uri): MaybeThenable<ResolverStrategy.SettingsResult>;
}

listEntries

interface ResolverStrategy {
  /**
   * Produce a list of resolved entries that are direct children of the given uri.
   *
   * This is the moral equivalent to something like non-recursive `fs.readdir()`. It is only
   * designed to show files and folders (for now).
   *
   * @param ctx A `ResolverContext` that should be used for making calls to other strategy methods
   * @param uri The uri at which to list entries
   */
  listEntries(ctx: ResolverContext, uri: Uri): MaybeThenable<ResolverStrategy.ListEntriesResult>;
}

readFileContent

interface ResolverStrategy {
  /**
   * Read the content at the uri as an `ArrayBuffer`
   *
   * ArrayBuffers are the lowest-common-denominator across the web and node and can easily be
   * decoded with standard web apis like `StringDecoder`. In Node.js, `Buffer` objects are also
   * `ArrayBuffer`s, allowing the tooling to be built on that primitive.
   *
   * This is helpful for the understanding that not all uris are expected to produce meaningful
   * text representations.
   *
   * @param ctx A `ResolverContext` that should be used for making calls to other strategy methods
   * @param uri The uri at which to read the content
   */
  readFileContent(
    ctx: ResolverContext,
    uri: Uri
  ): MaybeThenable<ResolverStrategy.ReadFileContentResult>;
}

Contributing

Velcro is organized as a monorepo with inter-module dependencies managed by lerna.

Initial setup:

# Install top-level developement dependencies
npm install

# Bootstrap package-level dependencies and set up symlinks between packages
npx lerna bootstrap

Running tests:

Running tests currently does not rely on having built packages. Jest is used with ts-jest to run unit and integration tests. Jest is set up such that each package is its own logical project and a further project is configured for top-level integration tests.

Jest is configured with moduleNameMapper settings that are designed to match the paths mappings in the tsconfig.json file.

Tests can be run via the test package script:

npm run test

Building:

Building velcro is also orchestrated by lerna and the actual building is done by Rollup.

npm run build