Important: Closure Compilation is only supported on ChromeOS Ash. On all other platforms, Closure Compiler is deprecated; TypeScript should be used for type checking. See bug
Statically-typed languages like C++ and Java have the notion of variable types.
This is typically baked into how you declare variables:
const int32 kUniversalAnswer = 42; // type = 32-bit integer
or as templates for containers or generics:
std::vector<int64> fibonacci_numbers; // a vector of 64-bit integers
When differently-typed variables interact with each other, the compiler can warn you if there's no sane default action to take.
Typing can also be manually annotated via mechanisms like dynamic_cast
and static_cast
or older C-style casts (i.e. (Type)
).
Using statically-typed languages provides some level of protection against accidentally using variables in the wrong context.
JavaScript is dynamically-typed and doesn't offer this safety by default. This makes writing JavaScript more error prone, and various type errors have resulted in real bugs seen by many users.
Enter Closure Compiler, a tool for analyzing JavaScript and checking for syntax errors, variable references, and other common JavaScript pitfalls.
To get the fullest type safety possible, it's often required to annotate your JavaScript explicitly with Closure-flavored @jsdoc tags
/** * @param {string} version A software version number (i.e. "50.0.2661.94"). * @return {!Array<number>} Numbers corresponding to |version| (i.e. [50, 0, 2661, 94]). */ function versionSplit(version) { return version.split('.').map(Number); }
See also: the design doc.
Given an example file structure of:
lib/does_the_hard_stuff.js
:
var wit = 100; // ... later on, sneakily ... wit += ' IQ'; // '100 IQ'
ui/makes_things_pretty.js
:
/** @type {number} */ var mensa = wit + 50; alert(mensa); // '100 IQ50' instead of 150
Closure compiler can notify us if we're using string
s and number
s in dangerous ways.
To do this, we can create:
With these contents:
# Copyright 2018 The Chromium Authors # Use of this source code is governed by a BSD-style license that can be # found in the LICENSE file. import("//third_party/closure_compiler/compile_js.gni") js_type_check("closure_compile") { deps = [ ":make_things_pretty", ] } js_library("make_things_pretty") { deps = [ "../lib:does_the_hard_stuff", ] externs_list = [ "$externs_path/extern_name_goes_here.js" ] }
You can locally test that your code compiles on Linux or Mac. This requires Java and a Chrome checkout (i.e. python, depot_tools). Note: on Ubuntu, you can probably just run sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jre
.
First, add the following to your GN args:
enable_js_type_check = true
Then you should be able to run:
ninja -C out/Default webui_closure_compile
and should see output like this:
ninja: Entering directory `out/Default/' [0/1] ACTION Compiling ui/makes_things_pretty.js
To compile only a specific folder, add an argument after the script name:
ninja -C out/Default ui:closure_compile
In our example code, this error should appear:
(ERROR) Error in: ui/makes_things_pretty.js ## /my/home/chromium/src/ui/makes_things_pretty.js:1: ERROR - initializing variable ## found : string ## required: number ## /** @type {number} */ var mensa = wit + 50; ## ^
Hooray! We can catch type errors in JavaScript!
See also: Closure Compilation with GN.
Closure compilation runs in the compile step of Linux, Android and ChromeOS builds.
From the command line, you try your change with:
git cl try -b linux-rel
To compile your code on every commit, add your file to the 'webui_closure_compile'
target in src/BUILD.gn
:
group("webui_closure_compile") { data_deps = [ # Other projects "my/project:closure_compile", ] }
Externs files define APIs external to your JavaScript. They provide the compiler with the type information needed to check usage of these APIs in your JavaScript, much like forward declarations do in C++.
Third-party libraries like Polymer often provide externs. Chrome must also provide externs for its extension APIs. Whenever an extension API's idl
or json
schema is updated in Chrome, the corresponding externs file must be regenerated:
./tools/json_schema_compiler/compiler.py -g externs \ extensions/common/api/your_api_here.idl \ > third_party/closure_compiler/externs/your_api_here.js