Thanks to @made I recently learned that dynamic code generation doesn't play nice with certain Content Security Policies (CSP). This has a major impact on a few core packages in #ThingUmbrella, like the https://thi.ng/vectors package which contains ~900 vector functions, most of them code generated and optimized for different vector sizes/dimensions (incl. n-dimensional versions). This package (and some others using a similar approach) are key dependencies for dozens of other geometry/visualization related packages... However, I found code generation the only way to practically manage & maintain the sheer amount of functionality provided.
Because of this (CSP impact), I've been working on a new code generator, which converts the dynamically generated code into statically generated source code files. This will make the overall initial package size bigger, but this shouldn't be a major problem in practice, since there're also very positive effects, including:
- The new format allows for doc strings for _all_ generated vector ops (with the dynamic approach there was no way to properly attach those in TypeScript)
- The new file structure (single function per source file) massively helps with dead code elimination when using a bundler, resulting in smaller final file/bundle sizes. When NOT using a bundler, similar filesize savings can be had by using direct imports (to individual functions) rather than full package imports
- None of the unused versions need to be code generated at runtime anymore, so also improving startup time
The new codegen is already covering around more than a third of the 900 ops. If you want to keep an eye on progress & discussion, follow this issue:
