id	summary	reporter	owner	description	type	status	component	version	severity	resolution	keywords	cc	stage	has_patch	needs_docs	needs_tests	needs_better_patch	easy	ui_ux
31524	Stop minifying only some admin static assets	Jon Dufresne	nobody	"Here is a list of JavaScript files in the admin app and their size:

{{{
  20K django/contrib/admin/static/admin/js/admin/DateTimeShortcuts.js
  15K django/contrib/admin/static/admin/js/inlines.js
  13K django/contrib/admin/static/admin/js/SelectFilter2.js
 8.8K django/contrib/admin/static/admin/js/urlify.js
 7.6K django/contrib/admin/static/admin/js/calendar.js
 6.7K django/contrib/admin/static/admin/js/actions.js
 5.9K django/contrib/admin/static/admin/js/admin/RelatedObjectLookups.js
 5.4K django/contrib/admin/static/admin/js/core.js
 5.3K django/contrib/admin/static/admin/js/SelectBox.js
 5.2K django/contrib/admin/static/admin/js/inlines.min.js
 3.2K django/contrib/admin/static/admin/js/actions.min.js
 1.9K django/contrib/admin/static/admin/js/collapse.js
 1.5K django/contrib/admin/static/admin/js/prepopulate.js
 1.1K django/contrib/admin/static/admin/js/autocomplete.js
  911 django/contrib/admin/static/admin/js/collapse.min.js
  878 django/contrib/admin/static/admin/js/cancel.js
  674 django/contrib/admin/static/admin/js/change_form.js
  569 django/contrib/admin/static/admin/js/popup_response.js
  495 django/contrib/admin/static/admin/js/prepopulate_init.js
  379 django/contrib/admin/static/admin/js/prepopulate.min.js
  363 django/contrib/admin/static/admin/js/jquery.init.js
}}}

Some things to notice:

1. Only 4 out of 17 files are minified.
2. The largest file, DateTimeShortcuts.js, is only 20 KB.
3. The largest file is also not included in the list of minified files.
4. All uncompressed files are smaller than the size of the 3 font assets, each ~80 KB.
5. All uncompressed files are smaller than the minified jQuery, ~87 KB.

I'm not sure if there is a deliberate or historical reason that only a fraction of the static assets are minified, but it looks like it could be an oversight. The approach is inconsistent.

Minifying is step a contributor must manually do. The documentation for doing so is here:

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/internals/contributing/writing-code/javascript/#javascript-patches

This is a step that is easy to forget, myself included. Whether or not one remembers to compress static assets will also affect the outcome of tests.

I suggest we drop the minificaiton of admin files altogether. For such small files, it doesn't seem worth it to add a build step and inconsistently at that.

In a typical production scenarios, the static assets will be cached and possibly compressed. Compressing static assets largely removes the size gains of minification. Additionally, there are third party apps to fill the role of static asset optimization.

I think we should continue to distribute the vendored libraries minified, however as they are not manually handled during typical contributions.
"	Cleanup/optimization	closed	contrib.admin	dev	Normal	fixed			Ready for checkin	1	0	0	0	0	0