Shepherd

What is it ?

Shepherd is a polyfill for the new module syntax coming in ECMAScript:Harmony.

Shepherd enables the Harmony modules syntax in engines that don't support it yet. ES:Harmony:modules compatible files can not be parsed on non ES6-enabled engines, unless using a polyfill such as Shepherd.

Quick features list

Shepherd:

• is cross-side, which means it works well in the browser and in the server
• has a ECMAScript Harmony compatible syntax
• Ennables files/libraries you can not modify (eg, jQuery from a CDN) to be declared as modules
• Provides an optimizer + minifier (using UglifyJS for production

Want more ?

You may want to check out the home page (which indeed uses Shepherd itself) or maybe even the tests.

Contact

You can join me:

• on Twitter: @xcambar
• on the mailing list

Credentials

Shepherd uses a number of excellent third-party software. Here's an exhaustive list:

• JISON, a port of Bison written in Javascript. Used to build the parser for the module syntax
• when.js, a Promises/A compliant library. Used to handle dependencies and async operations
• UglifyJS used in the build process for target generation and minification. Also used in the optimizer
• node-optimist for parsing command-line parameters in the optimizer

Many thanks to the authors, your work is incredible, your contribution invaluable!!

And last but not least:

Enjoy!