Coffeescript is a faster way to write Javascript. You write a program in its terse syntax, and it gets expanded into javascript. Here's a coffeescript file, Animal.coffee

class Animal
    constructor: (@sound) ->

    makeSound: -> 
        alert @sound

class Cow extends Animal
    constructor: -> 
        super "moo"

    ###* @param {number} numHours ###
    graze: (numHours) ->


animal = new Cow()
animal.makeSound()

animal.graze "16"
animal.eatGrass()

There are some errors in this file that wouldn't normally be detected until you run it.

Let's run jzbuild.py on it (Download jzbuild.py). It works on Linux or Windows as long as you have java and python installed. You do not need anything else.

jzbuild --closure --out out.js Animal.coffee

Creating /home/smhanov/.jzbuild
/home/smhanov/.jzbuild/rhino.jar not found! Downloading from ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/js/rhino1_7R2.zip
Could not find makefile.jz. Running jslint on input files.
Building release...
/home/smhanov/.jzbuild/jslint-rhino.js not found. Creating.
/home/smhanov/.jzbuild/compiler.jar not found! Downloading from http://closure-compiler.googlecode.com/files/compiler-latest.zip
Running closure compiler.
Fetching http://github.com/smhanov/jzbuild/raw/master/externs/jquery-mobile.js
Fetching http://closure-compiler.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/contrib/externs/jquery-1.5.js
Fetching http://closure-compiler.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/contrib/externs/json.js
java -jar /home/smhanov/.jzbuild/compiler.jar --compilation_level SIMPLE_OPTIMIZATIONS --warning_level VERBOSE --externs /home/smhanov/.jzbuild/jquery-mobile.js --externs /home/smhanov/.jzbuild/jquery-1.5.js --externs /home/smhanov/.jzbuild/json.js --js /tmp/tmptYeoZk --js Animal.js --js /tmp/tmpk3Azo0.js

Animal.js:26: WARNING - actual parameter 1 of Cow.prototype.graze does not match formal parameter
found   : string
required: number
animal.graze("16");
             ^

Animal.js:27: WARNING - Property eatGrass never defined on Cow
animal.eatGrass();
^

0 error(s), 2 warning(s), 72.4% typed

Here's what it gets compiled to, in out.js:

var __hasProp=Object.prototype.hasOwnProperty,__extends=function(b,a){function c(){this.constructor=b}for(
var d in a)__hasProp.call(a,d)&&(b[d]=a[d]);c.prototype=a.prototype;b.prototype=new 
c;b.__super__=a.prototype;return b},__bind=function(b,a){return function(){
return b.apply(a,arguments)}},__indexOf=Array.prototype.indexOf||function(b){for(
var a=0,c=this.length;a<c;a++)if(this[a]===b)return a;return-1},__slice=Array.prototype.slice;
var animal,Animal=function(b){this.sound=b};Animal.prototype.makeSound=function(){return alert(this.sound)};
var Cow=function(){Cow.__super__.constructor.call(this,"moo")};__extends(Cow,Animal);Cow.prototype.graze=function(){};
animal=new Cow;animal.makeSound();animal.graze("16");animal.eatGrass();

We can further minify and optimize the code by specifying the --release option.

jzbuild --closure --release --out out.js Animal.coffee

var c=Object.prototype.hasOwnProperty;var d;function g(){g.a.constructor.call(this,"moo")}(function(a,b){
function f(){this.constructor=a}for(var e in b)c.call(b,e)&&(a[e]=b[e]);f.prototype=b.prototype;a.prototype=
new f;a.a=b.prototype;return a})(g,function(a){this.b=a});d=new g;alert(d.b);d.c();

Motivation

I created jzbuild a long time ago to support my workflow when I made zwibbler.com, which is about 8000 lines of javascript. I like to take the entire project, including all javascript files, and crunch them down to a single .js file that contains my web application. Though I do not use the Google closure library, the Closure compiler is great for doing this and catching errors.

I recently discovered Coffeescript, and it is a real time saver. Writing a file in Coffeescript takes only 2/3 of the lines of code. I can physically write code faster, and I can see 50% more of my code on the screen at a time. So naturally I wanted to update jzbuild to take coffeescript as well as .js files as input.

Jzbuild is nothing but a glorified installer for other programs. It is possible due to the work of many others, with special mentions for:

• David Yeung, for creating jcoffeescript. This wrapper allows you to run coffeescript without installing anything except java. I forked it and added an option to allow external coffeescript code to be used.
• Michael Bolin, whose fork of Coffeescript adds type annotations to coffeescript that are required by the closure compiler. I hope that he continues his excellent work. I forked his fork and removed dependencies on the Google javascript libraries.

If your project is a combination of javascript and coffeescript, and you want static type checking, I hope that jzbuild is useful. Report and fix issues: jzbuild on github.

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