node-red

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This is a work in progress. Do not start implementing anything without discussing with @knolleary first

We have seen a growing number of users who are inserting JavaScript into global context so it can be readily reused amongst the Function nodes in a flow. This is not a great developer experience and something we could improve.

The basic concept of this feature is to introduce a new Function Library configuration node (from here on referred to as func-lib to save typing... not necessarily the final name) This would be a node that can hold common code accessible to regular Function nodes.

Some initial thoughts:

each func-lib node contains some code. It should be structured as a node module - so it declares the functions/members it exports. It has a mandatory name field.
a function node can then require the module by its name - just as you would in node.js code. Whether this is done by introducing the require keyword needs thinking about. Maybe something like node.require() to reduce confusion over the top-level require.
this will mean the function has an implicit dependency on the func-lib config node - not an explicit dependency (unless we try to code-parse to spot the require statements). All of the func-lib config nodes will then appear as unused and trigger the associated warnings on deploy. This feature could introduce a new flag on config nodes that identifies them as 'userless' - that it is okay to not have any nodes explicitly depend on it.
however, not knowing the explicit dependency will mean exporting the function node won't include the func-lib nodes it needs... so maybe the function node does need to have someone to declare its dependencies...
the expanded JS editor introduced in 0.19 could be extended to a more useful IDE; with a list of all Function and func-lib nodes that can be used to quickly switch between them whilst editing. This would remove the need to close the dialog of one Function node and open another - reducing the disruption when trying edit multiple function nodes together.