An old shortcoming of the `preprocessCSS`-function is its complete lack of support for our "normal" defines, which makes it very difficult to have build-specific CSS rules. Recently we've started using specially crafted comments to remove CSS rules from the MOZCENTRAL build, but (ab)using the `preprocessCSS`-function in this way really doesn't feel great.
However, it turns out to be surprisingly simple to instead use the "regular" `preprocess`-function for the CSS files as well. The only special-handling that's still necessary is the helper-function for dealing with CSS-imports, but apart from that everything seems to just work.
One reason, as far as I can tell, for having a separate `preprocessCSS`-function was likely that we originally used *lots* of vendor-prefixed CSS rules in our CSS files. With improvements over the years, especially thanks to Autoprefixer and PostCSS, we've been able to remove *almost* all non-standard CSS rules and the need for special-casing the CSS parsing has mostly vanished.
*Please note:* As part of testing this patch I've diffed the output of `gulp generic`, `gulp mozcentral`, and `gulp chromium` against the `master`-branch to check that there was no obvious breakage.
*Please note that most of the necessary code adjustments were made in PR 7890.*
ESLint has a number of advantageous properties, compared to JSHint. Among those are:
- The ability to find subtle bugs, thanks to more rules (e.g. PR 7881).
- Much more customizable in general, and many rules allow fine-tuned behaviour rather than the just the on/off rules in JSHint.
- Many more rules that can help developers avoid bugs, and a lot of rules that can be used to enforce a consistent coding style. The latter should be particularily useful for new contributors (and reduce the amount of stylistic review comments necessary).
- The ability to easily specify exactly what rules to use/not to use, as opposed to JSHint which has a default set. *Note:* in future JSHint version some of the rules we depend on will be removed, according to warnings in http://jshint.com/docs/options/, so we wouldn't be able to update without losing lint coverage.
- More easily disable one, or more, rules temporarily. In JSHint this requires using a numeric code, which isn't very user friendly, whereas in ESLint the rule name is simply used instead.
By default there's no rules enabled in ESLint, but there are some default rule sets available. However, to prevent linting failures if we update ESLint in the future, it seemed easier to just explicitly specify what rules we want.
Obviously this makes the ESLint config file somewhat bigger than the old JSHint config file, but given how rarely that one has been updated over the years I don't think that matters too much.
I've tried, to the best of my ability, to ensure that we enable the same rules for ESLint that we had for JSHint. Furthermore, I've also enabled a number of rules that seemed to make sense, both to catch possible errors *and* various style guide violations.
Despite the ESLint README claiming that it's slower that JSHint, https://github.com/eslint/eslint#how-does-eslint-performance-compare-to-jshint, locally this patch actually reduces the runtime for `gulp` lint (by approximately 20-25%).
A couple of stylistic rules that would have been nice to enable, but where our code currently differs to much to make it feasible:
- `comma-dangle`, controls trailing commas in Objects and Arrays (among others).
- `object-curly-spacing`, controls spacing inside of Objects.
- `spaced-comment`, used to enforce spaces after `//` and `/*. (This is made difficult by the fact that there's still some usage of the old preprocessor left.)
Rules that I indend to look into possibly enabling in follow-ups, if it seems to make sense: `no-else-return`, `no-lonely-if`, `brace-style` with the `allowSingleLine` parameter removed.
Useful links:
- http://eslint.org/docs/user-guide/configuring
- http://eslint.org/docs/rules/
Features / bug fixes in the preprocessor:
- Add word boundary after regex for preprocessor token matching.
Previously, when you mistakenly used "#ifdef" instead of "#if", the
line would be parsed as a preprocessor directive (because "#ifdef"
starts with "#if"), but without condition (because "def" does not
start with a space). Consequently, the condition would always be false
and anything between "#ifdef" and "#endif" would not be included.
- Add validation and error reporting everywhere, to aid debugging.
- Support nested comments (by accounting for the whole stack of
conditions, instead of only the current one).
- Add #elif preprocessor command. Could be used as follows:
//#if !FEATURE_ENABLED
//#error FEATURE_ENABLED must be set
//#endif
- Add #error preprocessor command.
- Add end-of-line word boundary after "-->" in the comment trimmer.
Otherwise the pattern would also match "-->" in the middle of a line,
and incorrectly convert something like "while(i-->0)" to "while(i0)".
Code health:
- Add unit tests for the preprocessor (run external/builder/test.js).
- Fix broken link to MDN (resolved to DXR).
- Refactor to use STATE_* names instead of magic numbers (the original
meaning of the numbers is preserved, with one exception).
- State 3 has been split in two states, to distinguish between being in
an #if and #else. This is needed to ensure that #else cannot be
started without an #if.
