zulip/static/third/handlebars

We use the handlebars library to render HTML inside the browser.

Handlebars templates actually get compiled into JS functions that in turn get called via a runtime library.

We install handlebars as a node module, and then we copy the runtime to the static directory and add some copyright info. The former files reside in node_modules/handlebars.

In our installation we call ./tools/compile-handlebars-templates to build the file static/templates/compiled.js. (Then in staging/prod, that file also gets minified.) For the runtime, in dev mode we serve it from the static/third directory, and in prod we minify from the static/third directory.

There are also some node unit tests that use handlebars, and all the code that they use comes directly from node_modules/handlebars, including the runtime.