Question

in our require.js and backbone.js app we use many views and templates.

in a buildstep we want to inline the templates with the appropriate view shims and remove the text plugin from the build in the process.

is that even possible?

Answer 1

That is automatically taken care of by RrequireJs when you run their r.js utility.
There’s no additional effort involved to ‘inline’ the templates.

As long as your templates are defined like so:

define ( ['text!templates/my.html'], function(myTemplate){})

Running r.js -o app.build.js will inline all your text!templates/my.html into its own string in your optimized javascript file. Here’s a sample of my app.build.js

 ({
    appDir: "../project-directory",
    baseUrl: ".",
    dir: "../../optimized",
    modules: [
        {
            name: "js/bootstrap"
        }
    ],
    paths: {
        text: 'js/libs/amd/plugins/text',
        order: 'js/libs/amd/plugins/order',
        jquery: 'js/libs/jquery-1.7.1',
        underscore: 'js/libs/underscore',
        backbone: 'js/libs/backbone',
        'jquery.mobile.router': 'js/libs/jquery.mobile.router'
    },
    optimize: 'uglify',
    optimizeCss: "standard"
})

RequireJS is smart enough to inline your dependencies prefixed with text!. In other words, the text plugin is only used in your development version. The optimized version will not require the text plugin.

If you’re interested in more details, you’ll find the instructions to optimize your project on RequireJS’s site. You can also find a detailed sample of the build file with all possible options documented here