Grubbit is a library designed to manage the retrieval of tiny, interdependent files. Independently, these files are so small that the request time is longer than the actual transfer time. This clogs up network traffic. This is, unfortunately, not something that prefetching can fix.
So we bundle up the files into packages.
Instead of referencing files within each package by name, though, they are always referenced by their hash (in other words, by a sampling of their actual content). The reason is to allow for deduplication: multiple packages can contain the same file.
This is a library intended to be used in webAO as a drop-in replacement for raw
fetch. Fetching on-demand presents sprites about 50-200 ms late, and while
prefetching might solve the problem in the short term, the longer-term problem
is that AO doesn't have a decent asset system. This is the solution to that
longer-term problem.
In order for this to work, however, clients will need to have a hint of what the hash of an emote or asset being presented is rather than its name. This will require significant protocol changes, but that's fine. It can be done.