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sjs
> When a module is required, we fetch it's javascript as a string using a synchronous XHR.
scotth
Right. What need does this project meet?

Sounds like a great way to create a lousy user experience.

marcuswestin
The synchronous XHR requests are only used in your development environment. For production, use `node browser-require/compile.js`, which will compile all your required javascript modules into a single file. It really doesn't make sense to asynchronously request all of your javascript files on production pages.
arthurschreiber
Obviously, that's meant for development only and that's why it also ships with it's own compiler for production (where I seriously hope they don't use a synchronous XHR to fetch the compiled code).
geuis
I don't understand. Require.js already works in the browser. http://requirejs.org/
marcuswestin
require.js does asynchronous file loading and is supposed to be deployed as-is in production. Browser-require makes it easy to develop your code using synchronous require statements and straight-forward dependency management. For production it has a compiler that combines all the required files into a single file (which is the only way you should serve your javascript in production)
rmurphey3
RequireJS also has a "compiler" that will combine your files into one or more layers for production use, as well as straightforward dependency management.
arthurschreiber
The main difference between this and other solutions like RequireJS is the fact that you don't have to wrap your CommonJS modules in callbacks and thus could in theory use them "unmodified".
marcuswestin
That's one of the big differences - I'd say the other big difference is that it comes with a compiler that bundles all your required modules into a single javascript file for production
arthurschreiber
RequireJS also has it's own compiler.
marcuswestin
Did not know that! :P

I guess browser-require will still be useful, since you can import the same files in node and in the browser

julius
It uses synchronous XHR to load the JS-File. Then evals the JS-String.

This is great, but I could not figure out debugging my loaded code with this solution.

Any ideas ?

arthurschreiber
Firebug and the WebKit Inspector allow you to set breakpoints by just putting "debugger;" where you want to jump into debugging.
julius
Thanks. I did not know that.

The problem of getting stacktraces for errors remains.

UPDATE: Just tested in Safari. I get nice stacktraces there. Its only a problem in Chrome.