My require.js configuration looks like so:
({
appDir: "../app",
baseUrl: "js/lib", // means the base URL is ../app/js/lib
dir: "../app-built", //target
// offtopic, but a very handy option
mainConfigFile: "../app/config.js",
// I'm not 100% sure if it's equivalent to your version
// where you're not using "modules" and just "name"
modules: [{
name: "../some/main" // this is ../app/js/some/main.js
}]
})
Reading through https://github.com/jrburke/r.js/blob/master/build/example.build.js#L15 - it seems you do want an appDir specified if you want the files to be copied to the target dir before optimization.
To answer your other questions
- you don't need to manually copy files over
- baseUrl should point to the same place as baseUrl used in your app's config - however you have to adjust it depending on what appDir you choose to use (e.g. appDir="../app" and baseUrl="js/lib", or appDir="../app/js" then baseUrl="lib", etc.)
- appDir and dir should be relative to the build config file - I don't know what happens when you use absolute paths
- yes - output dir does (has to?) live outside appDir. BaseURL is within the appDir/dir (all these names are really confusing..)
I would say
- use the "appDir" setting
- try using "modules" like I did instead of just "name"
- make "appDir" and "dir" relative paths to the build file if you can - these absolute paths might be what's breaking? because other than that the config looks very similar to the one I use
I know there's a different way of configuring it where your output is 1 file, which case the files are read from the source dir - but I haven't used that much myself.
Hope this helps.