Running javascript through preprocessing

Question

I am looking into building release scripts for the codebase when moving from a development platform to a production platform. I believe i have decided on running ant to send the javascript and css through the Google closure compiler.

I want to end up building the script to both compile out debug statements as explained Exclude debug JavaScript code during minification

Minify, and concatenate all the javascript into one file. Only one part of the process i am really confused about, how would i structure my .html file to include the javascript files separately, then run it through a script and now have the .html include the new 1 javascript file?

I am considering have 1 js file that points to all the other javascript files, and just include that one, then when its concatenated, concatenate all the files to that previous js file that pointed to the others.

Any suggestions on the general process would be appreciated on building release scripts to prepare javascript for public usage.

Answer 1

We decided to go with google closure compiler after a lot of research. Pretty much are going to go with top rated answer to Exclude debug JavaScript code during minification and simple compilation. We included a intermittent load file that loads all the rest of the files based on if its before preprocessing, or after so it will only include file if its already been minified together.