BoxLang Compiler

Sourceless deployments for all

BoxLang ships with many CLI tools. The BoxLang Compiler is one of them. This tool allows you to compile a file or a directory of files into Java Bytecode. This will allow you to do sourceless deployments.

The compiler still has some issues we need to iron out, mostly around apps using mappings that provide more than one Class/CFC path to reference a single physical file on the disk.

This tool will compile and place (by default) your BoxLang files into Java bytecode so you can do sourceless deployments. When BoxLang goes to compile a file, it will check to see if the file has bytecode in it and proceed with loading the class directly, skipping the parsing and compilation step.

Usage

Make sure you have installed the OS version of BoxLang so you get all the tools installed as well. Please note that the action command funnels through the boxlang binary, so you can use all the CLI arguments for boxlang runner.

// Using the script
boxlang compile
    --source /path/to/webroot/index.cfm 
    --target /path/to/compiled-webroot/index.cfm 
    --basePath /path/to/webroot

// Using the full path to jar
java -cp boxlang-1.0.0-all.jar ortus.boxlang.compiler.BXCompiler 
--source /path/to/webroot/index.cfm 
--target /path/to/compiled-webroot/index.cfm 
--basePath /path/to/webroot

Note, for the code to run, the compiled file needs to have the exact same path on disk as the original file. That means you’ll either need to copy the pre-compiled files back over to the original location or just point the source and target at the same place. BE WARNED: this will overwrite the source code! So pay attention.

Directory

And an entire directory like so:

// Using the script
boxlang compile
    --source /path/to/webroot/ 
    --target /path/to/compiled-webroot/ 
    --basePath /path/to/webroot

// Using the full path to the jar
java -cp boxlang-1.0.0-all.jar ortus.boxlang.compiler.BXCompiler 
--source /path/to/webroot/ 
--target /path/to/compiled-webroot/ 
--basePath /path/to/webroot

Also note, when pre-compiling an entire directory, the tool doesn’t touch non-code files, so if your target is a separate folder, that new folder won’t contain images, js files, etc. The typical use case for this would be in a CI build or similar, where you would override the code files in place.

CLI Options

• --basePath path The path to use for all base operations that require relative paths.

• --mapping dot_notation If there is a mapping name to the source folder, then add it here

• --source file/directory A file or directory to compile.

• --stopOnError or --stopOnError boolean to stop execution if an error occurs. Otherwise, it ignores it, logs it, and continues compiling.

• --target path Optional; if not passed, it will be compiled and put in the same location as the source. This is a directory where the compiled files will be placed.