Angularjs minify best practice
Yes, you need to use explicit dependency injection (second variant). But since Angular 1.3.1 you can turn off implicit dependency injection, it's really helpful to solve potential problems with renaming at once (before minification).
Turning off implicit DI, using strictDi config property:
angular.bootstrap(document, ['myApp'], {
strictDi: true
});
Turning off implicit DI, using ng-strict-di directive:
<html ng-app="myApp" ng-strict-di>
Yes, always! So this way even if your minifer converts $scope to variable a and $http to variable b, their identity is still preserved in the strings.
See this page of AngularJS docs, scroll down to A Note on Minification.
UPDATE
Alternatively, you can use ng-annotate npm package in your build process to avoid this verbosity.
It is safer to use the second variant but it is also possible to use the first variant safely with ngmin.
UPDATE:
Now ng-annotate becomes a new default tool to solve this issue.