Remove non-minified JavaScript and CSS files from releases

[jasdeepharibhajan]

There seems to be a lot of non-minified JavaScript and CSS files being included in the releases, are these really necessary? You may use them for internal testing, but for me as a user I would like a WordPress install which is as lean as possible and so I believe they should be removed.

If a developer wants to hack away at WordPress they are welcome to visit the SVN repo to find the original script files.

[georgestephanis]

I'm very opposed to this.

One of the ways the support crew will often ask people to debug an issue is to turn on the SCRIPT_DEBUG constant which swaps to unminified sources, and makes it easier to track down js errors. If they weren't shipped, it'd be unfeasible.

Also, it makes it easier for users to try playing with and modifying things, and shipping the raw sources is also very much in accordance with the GPL. If the distributed package only contained compiled assets, we'd be in violation, I believe.

Realistically, we're talking about maybe a meg at the upper bound of extra files that wouldn't need to be stored on disk. They don't affect page load times in the slightest, as they're just never included, merely there as a safety cushion if needed.

+lots to wontfix.

[jasdeepharibhajan]

Very valid comments George!

Yes - it's probably around 1MB uncompressed, maybe 300kb compressed that would be saved.

And I totally agree it would then be difficult to debug.

In the interests of completeness though, what I have suggested does not in any way violate GPL (at least not GNU GPL version 3), since so long as a user is made aware of where they can get to the source, it does not need to be included with the minified version of the code. More about that is explained in this article and in its corresponding links: ​http://www.gnu.org/licenses/javascript-labels.html

Conclusion: I'll move this to wontfix.