use full ClassName.prototype.memberName

[rhendric]

... when assigning members to prototypes. As of this writing, Google's
Closure Compiler can only perform some advanced analysis and
optimizations if this form is used instead of the runtime-equivalent
prototype var.

(See for yourself! Compare the optimizations that are applied to the output of current lsc with those applied to the output of the patch. The unused method gets removed in the latter.)

[vendethiel]

should be in test/compilation.ls

[rhendric]

👍?

[vendethiel]

The rationale looks a bit.. Slim to me. Do you have a bytesize comparison of the full compiler with and without this PR?

[rhendric]

The LS compiler's bytesize increases by 0.6%, from 224612 to 226009 (this is with regenerating browser/livescript.js before and after the last commit, and sending it through the Closure compiler with advanced optimizations). But I wouldn't expect the LS compiler, being a self-contained project, to benefit from this change. A real-world comparison should involve compiling a library written in LS that exports a lot of classes, and a second package that uses only some of the functionality of that library, and minifying both together with Closure. (I tried searching for a public example of this that I could compare for you, but it's a tricky thing to search for and I've come up empty so far.)

Here is a quick survey of what some other class-supporting transpiled languages do:

Language	ClassName.prototype.memberName	prototype var	something else
CoCo		☑️
CoffeeScript	☑️
ES6 (via Traceur or Babel)			☑️
JSweet	☑️
TypeScript	☑️

If there were more code generators using the prototype var pattern, I'd say this is on Closure to become smarter. But given that the two giants in the room, CoffeeScript and TypeScript, do it the long but easily-optimized way, I think it makes sense for LiveScript to follow suit and enjoy the same optimizations that they do.

[naturalethic]

I use zero classes in my projects. Classes are anathema to functional programming.

[rhendric]

Good news then, @naturalethic: this decision will have zero impact on your projects!

[vendethiel]

@gkz does that seem like a worthwhile change?

@rhendric there should be no breaking change with this, correct? Only code size, that's probably nullified via gzipping?

[rhendric]

Yup, no breaking change that I can think of.

[vendethiel]

Okay. I think I'll just wait for @gkz's approval, then, I think.