compiling javascript program with requirejs to remove require dependency

Question

I have written a JavaScript app using requirejs to handle dependency injection. I have compiled the file, but I get the obvious error when including it as a script:

Uncaught ReferenceError: define is not defined

I would like my JavaScript app NOT to depend on an AMD loader if the developer decides not to use one. However, due to the complexity of the application, I would like to use it to handle my app's dependencies.

Is there a compiler available that compiles JavaScript to remove the AMD dependency? I've seen a little bit of buzz around Grunt, but haven't found any straight answers on whether or not this is a feature of Grunt.

Answer 1

You can't completely remove the require/define dependency, but you can replace it with a much smaller shim that doesn't introduce any significant performance penalty. See the How can I provide a library to others that does not depend on RequireJS? section of the Optimization guide:

If you are building a library for use on web pages that may not use RequireJS or an AMD loader, you can use the optimizer to combine all your modules into one file, then wrap them in a function and use an AMD API shim. This allows you to ship code that does not ship with all of RequireJS, and allows you to export any kind of API that works on a plain web page without an AMD loader.

almond is an AMD API shim that is very small, so it can be used in place of require.js when all of your modules are built into one file using the RequireJS optimizer. The wrap build config option will put a function wrapper around the code, or you can provide your own wrapper if you need to do extra logic.