For ExtJS apps, what are the pros and cons of Sencha Cmd, and alternatives for its various purposes?

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I've started making changes to our app structure to make full use of the Sencha Cmd minification, theming, packaging, etc. capabilities.

But my manager wants me to consider what are the pros and cons of using Sencha Cmd, and what are the alternatives.

So for minification and obfuscation, rather than use Sencha Cmd, just use YUI Compressor directly.

For theming, is there any alternative, in terms of using the ExtJS 4.2 theming model but not build the theme with Sencha Cmd?

What else does Sencha Cmd offer that is a pro? What are the cons of using Sencha Cmd? What are the alternatives to using Sencha Cmd for the various things that must be done with an ExtJS app?

Finally, can I safely assume Sencha Cmd can be integrated into our existing build processes? We use Maven to compile Java for the back-end. Can Sencha Cmd also be executed in a completely hands-off, automated manner? Does Sencha Cmd itself need to be installed, or can its files just be added to the remote git repository, to remove the need for a dedicated build machine, so anyone can just pull from git and create a build?

Thanks very much in advance!

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extjssencha-cmd

1 Answers

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We are struggling with some of the same questions being a Maven shop as well. Our management has also decided to use the concept of Sencha Cmd Packages which are essentially re-usable libraries of ExtJS components you can build. Think of them as JARS you can version and store in a repository for others to use.

Sencha Cmd makes using packages easy but the hard part was we wanted to use Nexus as our repository manager. I found this post on how to do it...

http://www.ksmpartners.com/2014/03/sencha-package-management-using-sonatype-nexus/

But back to your question on why Sencha Cmd vs something else? Besides doing things the "sencha" way there is not much you coudln't do just with your Maven pom.xml file and some plugins to minify the JS etc. I think the only argument for using Sencha Cmd is that it's the Sencha recommended way and looks like it will be for the future so all the tutorials and future developers you bring on will be going through training using Sencha Cmd.

But I think you could be fine either way, it is really up to your gut.