Is there a way to set up Babel to continuously transpile and/or minify a src folder to a compiled folder? - babeljs

Question

Starting with an empty directory, is it possible to do that? Should I use stage-0 like it is on the Babel REPL?
I hope to transpile it just like how ReactJS does it. For some reason, I always got an error for just a file containing:
let obj = { a: 1 };
let newObj = {
...obj,
ha: 3
};
Other times, I can transpile a file, but if I transpile a folder, it'd say:
foo.js: Cannot read property 'contexts' of null
The commands I tried included:
npx babel src --out-dir compiled --presets=es2015,react,minify --watch
but the errors I mentioned above appeared. Also, when I do
npm install babel-minify
it reported
found 2489 vulnerabilities (849 low, 306 moderate, 1329 high, 5 critical)
There is also a notice
As of v7.0.0-beta.55, we've removed Babel's Stage presets.
Please consider reading our blog post on this decision at
https://babeljs.io/blog/2018/07/27/removing-babels-stage-presets
for more details. TL;DR is that it's more beneficial in the
long run to explicitly add which proposals to use.
and I wonder what should be done.
Is it possible to
just continuously minify a folder
transpile some ES6 or ES7, 8 syntax that are not yet commonly supported
transpile JSX as well
?

Answer 1

I have found some reliable ways to make it work, although I am not sure when I should use babel.config.json and when to use .babelrc.json or .babelrc. It seems I have to run babel as ./node_modules/.bin/babel and is it true if I don't npm install babel using the -g option.
Here is what works:
create a folder, such as TryBabel
cd TryBabel
Go to https://babeljs.io/setup.html and click "CLI"
You need a package.json, so use npm init and just press Enter a few times
It should lead you to install
a. npm install --save-dev #babel/core #babel/cli
b. now look at your package.json. Remove the script about test but use this: "build": "babel src -d lib"
Now npm run build or ./node_modules/.bin/babel src -d lib should work, but make sure you have some .js files in the src folder. The transpiled result will be in the lib folder.
Now to transpile things into "pre ES6", just follow the #babel/preset-env instructions:
a. npm install #babel/preset-env --save-dev
b. make your babel.config.json to contain { "presets": ["#babel/preset-env"] }
Now you can use npm run build to transpile once, or use ./node_modules/.bin/babel src -d lib --watch to keep on running it and "watch" the src folder and transpile files in it when the files change.
To do minification or make it work with JSX/React, see
https://babeljs.io/docs/en/babel-preset-minify
and
https://babeljs.io/docs/en/babel-preset-react
and make sure your babel.config.json file looks like:
{
"presets": [
[
"#babel/preset-env",
{
"useBuiltIns": "entry"
}
],
["#babel/preset-react"],
["minify"]
]
}
and remove minify if you don't want the code to be minified.