Optimal Minify

Find out what minification method is best for your code at runtime and use it.

• Install
• Why?
• CLI Usage
• API Usage
• Options
  • minifiers/--minifiers
  • compressors/--compressors
  • passes/--passes
  • comments/--comments
  • config/--config
  • --output
  • --no-output
  • --verbose
• Config or run specification

Install

npm install optimal-minify

Why?

What spurred this project was an investigation on the performance of two minifiers with a similar origin (uglify and terser). I noticed that some of our code in the videojs organization and internally performed better with uglify or terser but trying to hand configure every project to use either and evaluate the performance was tedious. That's where this project comes in. Not only does it evaluate real performance using gzip, or optionally brotli, but it also spits out the best result so that you don't event have to worry about it.

CLI Usage

Optimal Minify provides two binaries that work exactly the same: optimal-minify and optmin

Using --help to get option and usage help

optimal-minify --help
optmin --help

Code can be piped to either binary or passed as a file name.

cat some-file.js | optmin
optmin some-file.js

See Options, Config or run specification, or --help for further configuration needs.

API Usage

const optmin = require('optimal-minify');
const options = {
  code: '<actual-code-here>',
  compressors: ['gzip', 'brotli', 'none']
};

// specify runs directly
options.runs = [
  {minifier: 'uglify', options: {comments: 'some'}},
  {minifier: 'terser', options: {comments: 'some'}},
];

// specify run indirectly via minifiers, passes, and comments
Object.assign(options, {
  minifiers: ['terser', 'uglify'],
  passes: 2,
  comments: 'some'
});

// specify runs via config
options.config = 'config.js';


optmin(options).then(function(results) {
  // results are sorted and the first results will be the smallest
  // if two results are the same size, the fastest of the two will be the
  // first result
  const {minifier, time, bytes, compressor, options} = results[0];

  console.log('Best Run: ', {minifier, time, bytes, compressor, options});
});

Options

See src/defaults.js for the defaults options.

minifiers/--minifiers

An array of minifiers to use. Passed in as a comma separated list on the command line.

See src/minifiers.js for supported minifiers

compressors/--compressors

An array of compressors to use. Passed in as a comma separated list on the command line.

See src/compressors.js for supported minifiers

passes/--passes

The number of passes to test each minifier with. For instance if you pass in 2 then we will test all minifier and compressors combinations with 2 passes and 1 pass and return the result that gives the lowest compressed size.

comments/--comments

Most code keeps a license comment at the top of the file using a value of some. See Uglify/terser options for other values.

config/--config

Pass a configuration file in that will be used to seed all minification runs.

--output

A cli only option that can be passed to write output to a file instead of stdout.

--no-output

A cli only option that prevents output from being written anywhere and implies verbos that prevents output from being written anywhere and implies verbose.

--verbose

A Cli only option that writes out results and time taken at the end of a run to stderr.

Config or run specification

Runs can be specified by the module export of a config file, a json config file, or by using the API and passing in runs as an option directly.

Run need to contain the following things:

• A minifier property with a string value for a minifier. See src/minifiers.js for a full list.
• An options object that will be passed directly to the minifier. Useful for testing different options.