allow programmatic snowpack usage

[lifeart]

it will be grate to have ability to integrate snowpack into existing build pipeline with postprocessing & preprocessing
currently I can't find programmatic "build" examples, it will be great to have webpack-like API.

Why? Ember community trying to create universal bridge for all modern bundlers (for Ember apps), and it's https://github.com/embroider-build/embroider

Currently we have webpack support (https://github.com/embroider-build/embroider/blob/master/packages/webpack/src/ember-webpack.ts), but, it will be great to have ability to implement snowpack support.

[FredKSchott]

This is great timing, we just merged an experimental JS API for the purpose of SSR, but with an eye for more integrations just like this.

I’d love to learn more about what this project means for integrations. From the Webpack example code, is the idea that ember builds your app and then integrations optimize it (ex: by bundling)?

[lifeart]

Good news! Embroider doing all Ember “magic” and produces valid & consistent java script output, to allow manage it by other bundlers (webpack, parcel, rollup, etc)

Video: https://youtu.be/StFbdKBC94o

[FredKSchott]

Oh wow, this is so interesting, we take the exact same approach to building: Snowpack always creates a "vanilla" app, and then runs different optimizer plugins on that "vanilla" directory.

By chance, are you personally working on the embroider project or know anyone good that I can reach out to? There could be some good chances to collaborate here.

[lifeart]

I have very few commits to embroider, but @ef4 may bring some clarity here

[ef4]

I am happy to answer any questions.

There are certainly ecosystem-wide, cross-cutting issues around what really counts as "vanilla", because a lot of behaviors in popular packages are more de-facto standardized than actually standardized.

[Rich-Harris]

Came to open a similar thread but found this one instead. Now that we have things like snowpack.startDevServer, it'd be great to have a similar API for building. At the moment, SvelteKit has to do some slightly nasty stuff to run Snowpack at build time:

[FredKSchott]

yikes! yup, definitely envisioning this as part of the final launched v3.0 API.

[Rich-Harris]

Having said that, we just switched to running the client and server builds in separate processes, which makes building quicker. So if we used an API we'd have to trade the overhead of finding the binary for the overhead of manually doing the work in separate processes...

[FredKSchott]

Ha, tough choice. A middle ground would be to call the JS API from a node script that you own, and then running that node script in a separate process.

PR up in #1862