How to remove comments from transpiled code using babel-cli

Question

Using .babelrc is always recommended:

{
  comments: false
}

If using babel-cli, you can use the --no-comments options to achieve the same behaviour.

The latest version of babel-cli includes tests that check for this behaviour to be implemented correctly.

EDIT

It does look like a problem with babel CLI ignoring the comments in .babelrc , a workaround is to use the --no-comments option.

In your package.json

"build": "babel ./index.js --out-dir ./dist/index.js --no-comments"

To know all the options of babel-cli

./node_modules/.bin/babel -h

ORIGINAL

Where are you running babel from? Gulp?

Check that you have the .babelrc file in the same or a parent directory of the files beign transpiled

From babeljs.io:

Babel will look for a .babelrc in the current directory of the file
being transpiled. If one does not exist, it will travel up the
directory tree until it finds either a .babelrc, or a package.json
with a “babel”: {} hash within.

I have a project with this structure:

dist
- index.js
.babelrc
index.js
gulpfile.js
node_modules
- …

The relevant task in gulpfile.js

gulp.task('babel', () => {
    return gulp.src('index.js')
        .pipe(babel({
            presets: ['es2015']
        }))
        .pipe(gulp.dest('./dist/'));
});

Contents of .babelrc

{
    "comments": false
}

The comments are being succesfully removed.

Also check if you’re not setting the comments option to true in your gulpfile, for example.

Leave a Comment Cancel reply