Sencha SDK Tools 2.0 and ExtJS4: The Missing Docs

[Sottilde]

Hello everyone,

I just completed a very frustrating few days of work with the Sencha SDK Tools in order to get it to work in a consistent and reliable way for my medium-sized ExtJS4 project.

My requirements were:

1. The build must be 100% reliable. It cannot fail 25% of the time like the current SDK Tools do.
2. It must minify all javascript into one single app-all.js.
3. It must run on a build server.
4. It must update automatically - adding components to my application must not break the build.
5. The build must include the smallest working subset of ExtJS.

Unfortunately the SDK Tools in their current state will not do this reliably.

I have modified some of the SDK Tools source to make this happen. I created a comprehensive guide on how to use the SDK Tools including this modified source. Please take a look if your project is anything like mine.

Please post any thoughts/problems/ideas/code.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_yrwYiRTeExJiSYDhhPV75UEo8HUyl_RDq0JzxIRwwk/edit

[Sottilde]

I've been seeing a lot of views on the doc, but no comments. Please let me know how it has been going!

[TDroenner]

Hi Sottilde,

it's working very well now. Your fix to phantom.js did the trick. Now it's useable. At least for me.
Thank you very much.

Thorsten

[Sottilde]

Thanks, Thorsten. I've been discussing the possibility of including these changes in Beta4 with Sencha. Stay tuned.

[stewardsencha]

I cried when I found this. Thank you. I had given up with sencha and was trolling for tools...

Smart boy you. Wish I could have figured that out.

index-build is required to have the .html extension

Experimentally, I find it requires the ending slash if you don't have html.

my.site.com fails but mysite.com/ produces a jsb3

After two days of terror I can back to working out a deployment cycle. Yes!

* * *

There's one other area sencha has assumed everyone knows and understands, and that is the project directory structure. A real one, not a demo. Languages, sites, subdomains, projects, components, apps, sub-apps, builds, themes, libs, ux...

I developed something I thought was following their pattern, but the build tools and SA are proving me wrong.

Looks like maybe you have that one nailed too.

[Sottilde]

Thanks for the warm words, stewardsencha.

As for directory structure, I have been making it up as I go, starting from the default directory structure given by Architect.

My ExtJS4 project structure:

/app - all app files (e.g. '/app/controller', '/app/model', etc.)
/build - all build files, such as app-all.js, all-classes.js, etc.
/lib - all third party files, some in subfolders for organization
    /extensions - all extjs overrides or extensions
    /extjs - extjs builds
        /src - extjs source files 
/metadata - created by Architect
/resources
    /fonts - web fonts
    /images 
    /sass - I use compass, so all .scss files and builds go here.
/statics - static html files for my project
/support - Jenkins(Continuous Integration) files
/tests

All index-(build | test | dev | prod) files are in root, along with my-project.jsb3 and some Architect files.

That's been working out well for me for now.

[Phil.Strong]

comments on the gdoc itself don't seem to stick

[shadowfax]

This is amazing. Thank you!

[Sottilde]

Hey Phil - comments seem to stick in incognito for me. Maybe try again?

Abcoa - by 'resources', you mean JS files, right? Make sure you're running the updated phantom-jsb.js from the top of the doc. I had some problems with the actual building of the JSB3. However, if you mean that your JSB3 is built and you are not getting any output, I would triple-check your paths and run sencha build with the -v parameter.

Paths in a JSB3 require a tailing '/' which trips some people up. Running in verbose mode should tell you which paths have failed.

[papaja]

I'm trying to follow your instruction and I've put ext-dev.js instead of ext-debug.js.

I get these errors:
$ sencha create jsb -a index-build.html -p app.jsb3 -v
[E] Failed loading 'src/app/Application.js', please verify that the file exists
[object Object]
Failed loading 'src/app/Application.js', please verify that the file exists
file:////media/Podaci/web/ks/lib/ext-4.0/ext-dev.js : 8712
file:////media/Podaci/web/ks/lib/ext-4.0/ext-dev.js : 8216
file:////media/Podaci/web/ks/lib/ext-4.0/ext-dev.js : 2454
file:////media/Podaci/web/ks/lib/ext-4.0/ext-dev.js : 7943
file:////media/Podaci/web/ks/lib/ext-4.0/ext-dev.js : 7892

This happens with original and with your phantom file so this is caused by ext-dev. Any idea why?

If I use ext-debug I don't see these errors.