0.8.0: DEBUG mode console output & Ractive.parse

[timoxley]

Since 0.8.0, Ractive.parse generates a lot of noisy console output by default.

This is problematic when Ractive.parse is being used in node within a build tool e.g.

rstacruz/ractive-loader#5

Yes, it's a simple fix to turn DEBUG mode off, but I'd suggest that Ractive was a better behaved API in 0.7.3. In the browser, I can agree that DEBUG=true by default is fine, however when Ractive APIs are used in any other environment I'd suggest that having verbose logging on by default is generally considered poor behaviour.

[timoxley]

Note the 0.7.3 behaviour may have been less of a browser vs node thing and more a Ractive() vs Ractive.parse() thing, I haven't checked.

While turning debug logging off for Ractive.parse would resolve my immediate grievance, I believe it makes sense that Ractive should be quiet by default everywhere but the browser and even there, I'd be ok if debug mode were opt-in like most other tools.

[fskreuz]

Hmm... This sounds more like a tooling issue rather than Ractive itself. Ractive is not aware how it is being used by its dependents. It won't know if it's being used as a cli tool, or a server-side renderer, or part of some plugin for another tool. So it makes sense for the dependent (in this case, the tool) to set the conditions instead of Ractive.

Instead of making the core Ractive library do the decision, either:

• Have the tool turn if off,
• or have the tool suppress logging without completely turning off the option globally,
• or have the tool support turning off the errors via an option.

Furthermore, prior to 0.7, debug was by default false. There's a longer discussion about why debug was set to true in #1793

[evs-chris]

I could see where that would be quite painful parsing a large number of templates. How about a global option - something like Ractive.WelcomeMessage - that defaults to on that can be turned off by tools. That way you can still get deprecation and other warnings from your tooling? I'll have a PR shortly that includes some other useful debug stuff for parsing.