how to compress and minify assets using jekyll plugins

Question

I have a simple test jekyll app like so:

index.html is:

<script type="text/javascript" src="/assets/myfile.js"><script>
<p>hi</p>

and the myfile.js files is as follows:

var  x  = "this is a string";
alert(x +  "hi");

I just want to add a plugin so that it can minify the js file before it is written to the _site/assets/myfile.js file

How can i achienve that?

Answer 1

Here's a summary of what I've found while solving this in 2014:

Started with

1. https://github.com/donaldducky/jekyll-cssminify

   Development was going well until it was beat by this project:

2. http://www.matthodan.com/2012/11/22/jekyll-asset-pipeline.html

   ...which so far has been my favorite to implement, except it doesn't work now and it looks like development has been halted, so I was forced to turn to

3. https://github.com/envygeeks/jekyll-assets

   ...which again, beats #2 but is just a touch trickier to use. Anyway, that's the only one that works, so that's what I'm using now.