Exclude non-minified files from publish in `project.json` with ASP.NET Core - asp.net-core

Question

I am trying to find a proper configuration for the publishOptions inside project.json (ASP.NET Core 1.0 / Full Framework) so that non-minified files are not published.
Official documetation doesn't help much: project.json reference.
Searching for globbing patterns, and finding some artilcles with gulp examples, I came up with this wwwroot/js/**/*!(*.min.js), but it doesn't seem to work.
Is my syntax wrong? Or, it's just that project.json and dotnet publish don't support this syntax?
"publishOptions": {
"include": [
"wwwroot",
"Views",
"Areas/**/Views",
"appsettings.json",
"web.config"
],
"exclude": [
"wwwroot/lib",
"wwwroot/js/**/*!(*.min.js)",
"wwwroot/css/*.less",
"wwwroot/_references.js"
],
"includeFiles": [],
"excludeFiles": []
},

Answer 1

The typical workflow for JavaScript files/libraries management is to use gulp or grunt tasks to copy over the necessary files into the wwwroot folder which may happen on certain events (prebuild, postbuild, project open, clean).
In the latest tooling, the default MVC doesn't include gulpfile.js anymore as the most common usage was to minify and bundle js files, even when no external libraries were used so gulp may be a bit overwhelming for new users.
But it can easily be brought back, when you right-click the bundleconfig.json file in the solution explorer and choose "Bundler & Minifier" > "Convert to Gulp".
This creates a gulpfile.js and package.json (nodejs dependencies) in the root of your project and adds npm folder to the "Dependencies" section of Solution Explorer. When you watch in the Windows Explorer, you'll see a node_modules folder in the project root folder. That's where npm will download all packages and it's dependencies.
The generated gulpfile.js looks like this and has a few predefined tasks. i won't use this file as example, as it is strongly based on the bundleconfig.json and it's structure and use my gulpfile.json which used to be shipped with older templates.
"use strict";
var gulp = require("gulp"),
rimraf = require("rimraf"),
concat = require("gulp-concat"),
cssmin = require("gulp-cssmin"),
uglify = require("gulp-uglify");
var webroot = "./wwwroot/";
var paths = {
app: webroot + "app/",
libs: webroot + "lib/",
js: webroot + "js/**/*.js",
minJs: webroot + "js/**/*.min.js",
css: webroot + "css/**/*.css",
minCss: webroot + "css/**/*.min.css",
concatJsDest: webroot + "js/app.min.js",
concatCssDest: webroot + "css/app.min.css"
};
gulp.task("clean:js", function (cb) {
rimraf(paths.concatJsDest, cb);
});
gulp.task("clean:libs", function (cb) {
rimraf(paths.libs, cb);
});
gulp.task("clean:css", function (cb) {
rimraf(paths.concatCssDest, cb);
});
gulp.task("clean", ["clean:js", "clean:css", "clean:libs"]);
gulp.task("min:js", function () {
return gulp.src([paths.js, "!" + paths.minJs], { base: "." })
.pipe(concat(paths.concatJsDest))
.pipe(uglify())
.pipe(gulp.dest("."));
});
gulp.task("min:css", function () {
return gulp.src([paths.css, "!" + paths.minCss])
.pipe(concat(paths.concatCssDest))
.pipe(cssmin())
.pipe(gulp.dest("."));
});
gulp.task("min", ["min:js", "min:css"]);
gulp.task("libs", function (cb) {
gulp.src([
'bootstrap/**/*.js',
'bootstrap/**/*.css',
'jquery/**/*.js`, // we can also limit this to `jquery/dist/**/*.js to only include distribution files
'jquery/**/*.css'
], {
cwd: "node_modules/**"
})
.pipe(gulp.dest(paths.libs));
});
gulp.task("app", function (cb) {
gulp.src([
'app/**.js'
])
.pipe(gulp.dest(paths.app));
});
gulp.task("default", ['clean', 'libs']);
It looks more complicated than it actually is. There are several minizier tasks (min:js, min:css) and one general minifier task min which just runs all others in sequence.
A clean task which deletes the output file(s) from wwwroot. When converting from the template, it deletes only the default wwwroot/js/site.min.js file.
Since there are no javascript libraries used in the default template, except of what's inside the wwwroot/lib folder already the packages are not handled that way.
So first thing you may want is to grab bootstrap and jquery from npm rather than the static versions provided by the template. So we add the dependencies to the package.json.
{
"name": "app",
"version": "0.0.0",
"private": true,
"dependencies": {
"bootstrap": "3.3.6",
"jquery": "2.2.0"
},
"devDependencies": {
"gulp": "3.8.11",
"gulp-concat": "2.5.2",
"gulp-cssmin": "0.1.7",
"gulp-uglify": "1.2.0",
"rimraf": "2.2.8"
}
}
The libs task from the gulpfile.js above for example will copy over all required files of a package to wwwroot. I said required, because in the packages there are often unbundled files for debugging and stuff, which we usually don't want inside wwwroot (they can grow quite big).
gulp.task("libs", function (cb) {
gulp.src([
'bootstrap/**/*.js',
'bootstrap/**/*.css'
], {
cwd: "node_modules/**"
})
.pipe(gulp.dest(paths.libs));
});
It will look for all *.js and *.css files within the bootstrap folder in node_modules folder and copy them over to path.libs which is configured as wwwroot/lib/.
The app task does the same for our own code. clean clears the folders and (i.e. before switching from debug to release build or before publishing).
Finally you can bind the tasks to certain VS Events. You need to open the "Task Runner Explorer" View (View > Other Window > Task Runner Explorer). There you can choose a task and right-click it, then "Binding" and choose one of the binding (Before Build, After Build, Clean, Projct Open). They are pretty self explaining, "Clean" means when you do "Build > Clean Solution".
Now to the publishing part. You can run certain command, when you publish your application (either via dotnet or Visual Studio).
In the project.json there is a scripts section for this.
"scripts": {
"prepublish": [ "npm install", "bower install", "gulp clean", "gulp min", "gulp libs" ],
"postpublish": [ "dotnet publish-iis --publish-folder %publish:OutputPath% --framework %publish:FullTargetFramework%" ]
}
Each of the entries "prepublish" is one command to be executed. In this example, before the publishing begins, npm install will be executed first in order to restore all npm dependencies. Then bower install to install the dependencies managed by bower (remove it if you don't use bower and do all via npm).
The next three commands are the interesting ones, they will execute gulp tasks. We can also simplify this by adding a "publish" task.
gulp.task("publish", ['clean', 'libs', 'min']);
"scripts": {
"prepublish": [ "npm install", "bower install", "gulp publish" ],
"postpublish": [ "dotnet publish-iis --publish-folder %publish:OutputPath% --framework %publish:FullTargetFramework%" ]
}
This will copy all the necessary files for publishment into the wwwroot folder, publish the files and then call the "postpublish" scripts.
That's a rough introduction in gulp. It's has a learning curve, but once you get it working it imrpoves the overall workflow.
What's not covered here is to add a watch task which may look into a certain folder (I usually use app folder in the project root) and when any file changes there run the app task, so the our code gets minifed and copied over to wwwroot and is available when we debug it.

Answer 2

A simple alternative is:
Rename unminified source to *.debug.js and *.debug.css
They are now easier to exclude:
"publishOptions": {
"include": [
"wwwroot"
],
"exclude": [
"wwwroot/**/*.debug.*"
]
}
IMHO unminified source should stick out and look abnormal. It is more deserving of a file name wart than minified code.
This also brings the build output files into line with the rest of the .Net build configuration. It makes it clear that your debug versions may well include extra logging and debug utilities and that its not for production.