m5-docs/docs/build_process.md

Build Process

Here is what the build system is doing under the hood.

CLI

1. The build system looks for a config file. By default it looks for config.json in the current directory, or you can specify the config path with the -c --config flag.
2. If there is an includes attribute in the config, it will take those JSON files and deep merge them into the properties object.
3. It then takes all the JSON files in the source attribute in the config and performs a deep merge onto the properties object.
4. Then it iterates over the platforms in the config and:
5. Perform all transforms, in order, defined in the transforms attribute or transformGroup.
6. Build all files defined in the files array
7. Perform any actions defined in the actions attribute

Node

If you use this as a node module, the steps are slightly different, but the overall.

1. When you call the extend method, you can either pass it a path to a JSON config file, or give it a plain object that has the configuration. This will perform steps 1-3 above.
2. Then you can now call buildAllPlatforms or other methods like buildPlatform('scss') or exportPlatform('javascript'). This is equivalent to step 4 above.

const StyleDictionary = require('style-dictionary');

const styleDictionary = StyleDictionary.extend( 'config.json' );
// is equivalent to this:
// const styleDictionary = StyleDictionary.extend(
//   JSON.parse( fs.readFileSync( 'config.json' ) )
// )

// You can also extend with an object
// const styleDictionary = StyleDictionary.extend({ /* config options */ });

// This will perform step 3 above, for each platform:
// 1. Apply transforms
// 2. Build files
// 3. Perform actions
styleDictionary.buildAllPlatforms();