Dojo custom build: which files to deploy

Question

First, we're new to Dojo and are free do things the "new" way, so I'm mostly ignoring the pre-1.7 sections of the documentation. Still, I'm coming up confused when comparing various articles, documents, and sample scripts.

The bottom line is that I can't find a straightforward write-up on how to create and deploy a custom build for Dojo. Most specifically, which .js and .css files we need to deploy. There's a lot of documentation on creating a build, but none I've found on deploying.

I eventually gathered that building everything into a single dojo.js is a reasonable practice for mobile, and that I simply have to extract that one file out of the build directories and deploy it to my server, but then I get missing CSS references, and it doesn't seem like trial-and-error is the correct way to resolve those.

Here's our specific, current case:

<script type="text/javascript">
        require(
                // deviceTheme to auto-detect device styles
                [   
                    "dojox/mobile",
                    "dojox/mobile/parser",
                    "dojox/mobile/deviceTheme"
                ]);
</script>

Here's the build profile:

dependencies = {
    stripConsole: "normal",

    layers: [
        {
            name: "dojo.js",
            customBase: true,    // prevent automatic inclusion of dojo/main
            dependencies: [
                "dojox.mobile.parser",
                "dojox.mobile",
                "dojox.mobile.deviceTheme"
            ]
        }
    ],

    prefixes: [
        [ "dijit", "../dijit" ],    // example included; not clear why
        [ "dojox", "../dojox" ]
    ]
}

(Executed by the dojo-release-1.7.2-src\dojox\mobile\build\build.bat script.)

So I guess the specific questions are:

1. Which CSS files do I deploy for this case?
2. How do I know in general which files, including CSS files, to deploy?
3. Is there a good, current tutorial that I'm missing?
4. Are the existing scripts up-to-date? For example, why does mobile-all.profile.js use dependencies= instead of the profile= that the 1.7 build tutorial describes?

Answer 1

Which CSS files do I deploy for this case?

This is conditional, if a page uses a specific module and it has its own css-rules, include them.

This is not the way, but starting out with dojo.css (base, reset), dijit.css (base, layouts and more), nihilo.css (example theme) and android.css (example theme) would make a good foundation

• If you want to use a theme, include the 'basename', e.g. dojox/mobile/themes/iphone/iphone.css
• If for instance iphone.css does not '@import' some exotic widget you use, include the css which is delivered by the widget itself (as example, dojox/widget/ColorPicker/ColorPicker.css). Docs for each widget _should make not of this.

How do I know in general which files, including CSS files, to deploy?

• There is no harm in uploading all files, the loader will decide which to get from cached-build, which to leave alone and what to download during runtime.
• deploy everything.. when you build a 'action=release' all files are minified within the prefixes defined dojo (defaults, allways), dijit, dojox and any packages you add.
• the build results in optimized toolkit-tree, deploy all or you might face a situation where a conditional include (Toggler.js for instance, or acme.js selector incl etc) is missing.

Is there a good, current tutorial that I'm missing?

By 'thumbrule', any 1.6+ docs are stable, but they mostly say the same. As you start a profile, it may get a bit trial and error (the sequence of inline-html inclusion of script files is of outmost importance). What you posted looks good, though think about if customBase:true is nescessary.

Make sure you have seen this for versions 1.6-1.7 and version 1.8

Are the existing scripts up-to-date? For example, why does mobile-all.profile.js use dependencies= instead of the profile= that the 1.7 build tutorial describes?

You can use the existing ones, out the box. The builder however is changing, moving up against the much debated 2.0 release. For now, the new schemes are allowed as well as the regular ones. But in fact the variable name can be foo or bar, only the variable's value is put to use. The file must 'return' a single object.

As i understood, the reason is that CommonJS Packages/1.0 is the new bible for AMD and builder 1.7+. It has allways been the 'thumb' scheme the package hierachy has followed however - but the syntax will most likely get more and more strict the closer we move to 2.0. (see if you can hook up with snover on #dojo @ irc.freenode.org)