This is the Operating Systems class initial project. See http://www.labouseur.com/courses/os/ for details. Fork this (or clone, but fork is probably better in case Alan changes anything about the initial project) into your own private repository. Then add Alan (userid Labouseur) as a collaborator.
- Install the npm package manager if you don't already have it.
- Run
npm install -g typescriptto get the TypeScript Compiler. (You may need to do this as root.)
Some IDEs (e.g., Visual Studio, IntelliJ, others) natively support TypeScript-to-JavaScript compilation. If your development environment does not then you'll need to automate the process with something like Gulp.
npm install -g gulpto get the Gulp Task Runner.npm install -g gulp-tscto get the Gulp TypeScript plugin.
Run gulp at the command line in the root directory of this project.
Edit your TypeScript files in the source/scripts directory in your favorite editor.
Visual Studio and IntelliJ have some tools that make debugging, syntax highlighting, and lots more quite easy.
WebStorm looks like a nice option as well.
Gulp will automatically:
- Watch for changes in your source/scripts/ directory for changes to .ts files and run the TypeScript Compiler on them.
- Watch for changes to your source/styles/ directory for changes to .css files and copy them to the distrib/ folder if you have them there.
Why are we using Gulp? Gulp is a tool that allows you to automate workflow tasks. In this instance, we want it to watch our directory for changes and automatically run the TypeScript compiler on the source files to output JS to a distribution folder. We also use it to copy over .css files to our distribution folder.
Copying over CSS files to a dist folder? That seems useless Well, in this case, it pretty much is, but it keeps your development consistent. (For the purposes of this project, feel free to put your CSS in the same directory as index.html. That said...) You keep your source in the source directory, and you keep what you want to output to the user in the dist directory. In more mature front-end environments, you may be utilizing a CSS-preprocessor like LESS or SASS. This setup would allow you to keep your .less or .scss files in the source/styles directory, then output the compiled css folders to the dist/styles directory.
What other cool things can I do with Gulp? If you were in a production environment where you wanted to obfuscate your code, you can use Gulp to automatically run things like Uglify on your JS/CSS. Or if you wanted to minify your CSS. It is NOT recommended to do this for this project as you and Alan will need to read and debug this code, and allow GLaDOS to run code against yours.
Where can I get more info on Gulp? Right this way!
What's TypeScript? TypeScript is a language that allows you to write in a statically-typed language that outputs standard JavaScript. It's all kinds of awesome.
Why should I use it? This will be especially helpful for an OS or a Compiler that may need to run in the browser as you will have all of the great benefits of type checking built right into your language.
Where can I get more info on TypeScript Right this way!