dojo build - nls bundles, build fails unless bundles are in "dojo/dojo"? - dojo

Question

This is my distillation of a build failure I was getting. The symptom was that when optimizing with shrinksafe my build would fail with the error:
[exec] js: "<eval'ed string>#1(Function)#1(eval)", line 127: uncaught JavaScript runtime exception: TypeError: Cannot read property "1" from null
[exec] at <eval'ed string>#1(Function)#1(eval):127
[exec] at <eval'ed string>#1(Function)#1(eval):163
If my code pulled in its nls files with a pattern such as
"dojo/i18n!./nls/MyResource"
However, this construct is common throughout much dojo code, which builds cleanly. So I experimented by copying some dojo code into my module and discovered that if the nls resource was loaded into the dojo/dojo layer then my layers built correctly, if I loaded the same nls resource in my own layer then we get the failure above.
So cutting this right down to a minimal case, I copied dijit/form/_ComboBoxMenuMixin.js to my own module and also the corresponding nls resources.
I have three test cases, one works, the other two give the failure above.
My questions:
Seems like I need to include my own nls resources in the "dojo/dojo" layer, it must be precisely this layer. Surely this can't be right? What are my alternatives?
Working profile:
layers: {
"dojo/dojo" : {
customBase: false,
include: [
"modules/nls/ComboBox",
],
exclude: []
},
"MyLayer" : {
customBase: false,
include: [
"modules/ComboCopy",
],
exclude: []
},
}
Failure: nls in same layer
layers: {
"dojo/dojo" : {
customBase: false,
include: [
],
exclude: []
},
"MyLayer" : {
customBase: false,
include: [
"modules/nls/ComboBox",
"modules/ComboCopy",
],
exclude: []
},
}
failure, load nls in a different layer name
layers: {
"myNlsLayer" : {
customBase: false,
include: [
"modules/nls/ComboBox",
],
exclude: []
},
"MyLayer" : {
customBase: false,
include: [
"modules/ComboCopy",
],
exclude: []
},

Answer 1

NLS modules shouldn’t be specified as being included in layers. When your layer modules are processed, all of their NLS dependencies will be automatically bundled into related layers with a filename suffix corresponding to each possible locale. e.g. for a layer MyLayer.js you will also get a MyLayer_en-us.js, MyLayer_es-es.js, etc. This enables visitors to load only the language bundle they need.
If you want to forcibly include a particular locale within your layers (for example, because you know all your visitors only speak English), you can use the includeLocales property to do so:
layers: {
MyLayer: {
includeLocales: [ 'en-us' ]
}
}
Whilst your first profile may appear to work, it is unlikely that it is actually doing what you expect, which is probably why ShrinkSafe is crashing.
A couple other notes:
ShrinkSafe is deprecated; you should really use Closure Compiler or UglifyJS instead.
The customBase flag applies only to the main dojo/dojo layer and means “do not automatically include the default Dojo Base modules”. You do not need to apply it to your other layers.