Enhancement: Implement Tsickle for Google Closure Compiler

[TheLarkInn]

Currently there is an angular project which I think could benefit all Typescript users.

As we all know, Google closure compiler is still the most efficient minifier, however requires annotations for it to be used in ADVANCED mode.

https://github.com/angular/tsickle

This project is using a baked tsc that automagically converts decorators and types to annotations that allow for GCC to understand.

Since Webpack2 is implementing LoaderOptionsPlugin which hands the responsibilities of minifying to the loader, it would be perfect timing to add a minify feature into the loader.

Thoughts?

[s-panferov]

@TheLarkInn do you have any concerns about just using additional loader such as https://www.npmjs.com/package/webpack-closure-compiler or any analog?

[TheLarkInn]

@s-panferov not a problem at all. I'm using it currently anyways minification over UglifyJsPlugin in SIMPLE mode but adding the annotations is a step that has to happen during the transpilation process (which Tsickle does) so GCC can perform tree-shaking and dead code elimination (ADVANCED mode).

[niieani]

This would be fantastic! Using Closure Compiler instead of Babel as the second step of TS compilation with tsickle's annotations would make this the best TS->JS workflow to date. 🎆

[CSchulz]

Is there anything open to get this implemented?

[stefan-leye]

+1

[ianks]

How would this integrate with JS code? Would GCC just be used for the typescript files then be bundled by webpack?

[Lonli-Lokli]

webpack-closure-compiler plugin is not supported, will this feature be implemented?