Self-host all external JS?

[shreevatsa]

trafficstars

Currently, scripts are loaded from a few external sources. E.g. visiting http://localhost:5000/proofing/foo/14/ I see:

• (57.0 kB) https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/[email protected]/build/openseadragon/openseadragon.min.js
• (25.2 kB) https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@indic-transliteration/[email protected]/sanscript.min.js
• (15.4 kB) https://unpkg.com/[email protected]/dist/cdn.min.js

Would it make sense to cache them all, maybe bundle them into one, and load them ourselves?

Possible benefits:

• Privacy (requests not sent to jsdelivr / unpkg / whatever external source)
• Security and stability (the external website can't change the file under us, to something possibly malicious or broken)
• Will/can work locally without internet, at least not required on every request.

The last one is of most interest to me, as my 3-year-old keeps disconnecting the internet at home 😄 and I'm typing this from unreliable hotel wi-fi.

Possible disadvantages:

• Work to set it up
• More hosting / serving costs
• May be slower than the CDN

[akprasad]

I think the pros make sense, and the cons aren't too bad. What I'm curious about is why the CDN versions aren't being cached, as I would expect them all to have long-lived HTTP caches ...

[shreevatsa]

I think the lack of caching was because of turning off caching in the Network tab of Developer Tools:

(Will try without that option…)

[akprasad]

IIRC developer tool settings usually take place only if the console is open. But, let me know if that works