How to ignore libraries in browserify programmatic api

Question

Assume the below code is found in bundler.js and tracing entry.js leads to var B = require('backbone'); (Backbone is a dependency installed as declared in package.json).

var browserify = require('browserify');
var bundle = new browserify();
bundle.add('entry.js');
bundle.bundle({
  noParse: ['backbone']
});

Executing this bundler yields a stream that contains the original backbone source. Based on browserify's command line options I expected it to skip backbone alltogether. Reading through the source, I expected perhaps the following would work:

var browserify = require('browserify');
var bundle = new browserify({
    noParse: ['backbone']
});
bundle.add('entry.js');
bundle.bundle();

Though backbone source still appears in the stream output.

Is it possible to use --noparse=FILE as a configuration option in this application of the api?

Solution 1

As you can see from here the --noparse option provided on the command line is passed to the browserify({ }) call.

So in order to tell browserify to not parse jquery and three.js you have to pass the full path to your jquery and three.js files.

Example:

browserify({
  noParse: [
   require.resolve('./vendor/jquery'),
   require.resolve('./vendor/three')
  ]
})
.require(require.resolve('./entry.js'), { entry: true })
.bundle();

Solution 2

var browserify = require("browserify")

browserify({entries: ['./src/client/app.js']})
.ignore('jquery')

That would make browserify ignore jquery, and then jquery can be added on index.html directly.

Comments

[smhg]

Did you find a solution to this?

[kurttheviking]

I appreciate the reference to source. I implemented a similar block but the parse times with and without noParse on all large files (jQuery, Backbone, Lodash) is identical: ~15seconds. to me, that suggests the files are indeed still being parsed

[Software Engineer]

Perhaps a little more explanation?

[cancerbero]

this worked for me, thanks, example: browserify({entries: ['./js/index.js']}).ignore('backbone').ignore('jquery').igno‌​re('underscore')

[Louis-Rémi]

I had trouble verifying noParse actually worked. I ended up adding console.log(file); in node_modules/browserify/index.js' globalTr function just before the var parts = file.split('/node_modules/'); line. It helped me realize I was using the wrong paths for the file I wanted to ignore. I wish browserify had a more verbose --verbose mode.

[haxpor]

More example of chart.js that did it here github.com/chartjs/Chart.js/blob/master/gulpfile.js#L105