.\" generated with Ronn/v0.7.3 .\" http://github.com/rtomayko/ronn/tree/0.7.3 . .TH "NPM\-DEVELOPERS" "7" "August 2014" "" "" . .SH "NAME" \fBnpm\-developers\fR \- Developer Guide . .SH "DESCRIPTION" So, you\'ve decided to use npm to develop (and maybe publish/deploy) your project\. . .P Fantastic! . .P There are a few things that you need to do above the simple steps that your users will do to install your program\. . .SH "About These Documents" These are man pages\. If you install npm, you should be able to then do \fBman npm\-thing\fR to get the documentation on a particular topic, or \fBnpm help thing\fR to see the same information\. . .SH "What is a package" A package is: . .IP "\(bu" 4 a) a folder containing a program described by a package\.json file . .IP "\(bu" 4 b) a gzipped tarball containing (a) . .IP "\(bu" 4 c) a url that resolves to (b) . .IP "\(bu" 4 d) a \fB@\fR that is published on the registry with (c) . .IP "\(bu" 4 e) a \fB@\fR that points to (d) . .IP "\(bu" 4 f) a \fB\fR that has a "latest" tag satisfying (e) . .IP "\(bu" 4 g) a \fBgit\fR url that, when cloned, results in (a)\. . .IP "" 0 . .P Even if you never publish your package, you can still get a lot of benefits of using npm if you just want to write a node program (a), and perhaps if you also want to be able to easily install it elsewhere after packing it up into a tarball (b)\. . .P Git urls can be of the form: . .IP "" 4 . .nf git://github\.com/user/project\.git#commit\-ish git+ssh://user@hostname:project\.git#commit\-ish git+http://user@hostname/project/blah\.git#commit\-ish git+https://user@hostname/project/blah\.git#commit\-ish . .fi . .IP "" 0 . .P The \fBcommit\-ish\fR can be any tag, sha, or branch which can be supplied as an argument to \fBgit checkout\fR\. The default is \fBmaster\fR\. . .SH "The package\.json File" You need to have a \fBpackage\.json\fR file in the root of your project to do much of anything with npm\. That is basically the whole interface\. . .P npm help See \fBpackage\.json\fR for details about what goes in that file\. At the very least, you need: . .TP name This should be a string that identifies your project\. Please do not use the name to specify that it runs on node, or is in JavaScript\. You can use the "engines" field to explicitly state the versions of node (or whatever else) that your program requires, and it\'s pretty well assumed that it\'s javascript\. . .IP It does not necessarily need to match your github repository name\. . .IP So, \fBnode\-foo\fR and \fBbar\-js\fR are bad names\. \fBfoo\fR or \fBbar\fR are better\. . .TP version A semver\-compatible version\. . .TP engines Specify the versions of node (or whatever else) that your program runs on\. The node API changes a lot, and there may be bugs or new functionality that you depend on\. Be explicit\. . .TP author Take some credit\. . .TP scripts npm help If you have a special compilation or installation script, then you should put it in the \fBscripts\fR hash\. You should definitely have at least a basic smoke\-test command as the "scripts\.test" field\. See npm\-scripts\. . .TP main If you have a single module that serves as the entry point to your program (like what the "foo" package gives you at require("foo")), then you need to specify that in the "main" field\. . .TP directories This is a hash of folders\. The best ones to include are "lib" and "doc", but if you specify a folder full of man pages in "man", then they\'ll get installed just like these ones\. . .P npm help You can use \fBnpm init\fR in the root of your package in order to get you started with a pretty basic package\.json file\. See \fBnpm\-init\fR for more info\. . .SH "Keeping files out of your package" Use a \fB\.npmignore\fR file to keep stuff out of your package\. If there\'s no \fB\.npmignore\fR file, but there \fIis\fR a \fB\.gitignore\fR file, then npm will ignore the stuff matched by the \fB\.gitignore\fR file\. If you \fIwant\fR to include something that is excluded by your \fB\.gitignore\fR file, you can create an empty \fB\.npmignore\fR file to override it\. . .P By default, the following paths and files are ignored, so there\'s no need to add them to \fB\.npmignore\fR explicitly: . .IP "\(bu" 4 \fB\.*\.swp\fR . .IP "\(bu" 4 \fB\._*\fR . .IP "\(bu" 4 \fB\.DS_Store\fR . .IP "\(bu" 4 \fB\.git\fR . .IP "\(bu" 4 \fB\.hg\fR . .IP "\(bu" 4 \fB\.lock\-wscript\fR . .IP "\(bu" 4 \fB\.svn\fR . .IP "\(bu" 4 \fB\.wafpickle\-*\fR . .IP "\(bu" 4 \fBCVS\fR . .IP "\(bu" 4 \fBnpm\-debug\.log\fR . .IP "" 0 . .P Additionally, everything in \fBnode_modules\fR is ignored, except for bundled dependencies\. npm automatically handles this for you, so don\'t bother adding \fBnode_modules\fR to \fB\.npmignore\fR\. . .P The following paths and files are never ignored, so adding them to \fB\.npmignore\fR is pointless: . .IP "\(bu" 4 \fBpackage\.json\fR . .IP "\(bu" 4 \fBREADME\.*\fR . .IP "" 0 . .SH "Link Packages" \fBnpm link\fR is designed to install a development package and see the changes in real time without having to keep re\-installing it\. (You do need to either re\-link or \fBnpm rebuild \-g\fR to update compiled packages, of course\.) . .P npm help More info at \fBnpm\-link\fR\. . .SH "Before Publishing: Make Sure Your Package Installs and Works" \fBThis is important\.\fR . .P If you can not install it locally, you\'ll have problems trying to publish it\. Or, worse yet, you\'ll be able to publish it, but you\'ll be publishing a broken or pointless package\. So don\'t do that\. . .P In the root of your package, do this: . .IP "" 4 . .nf npm install \. \-g . .fi . .IP "" 0 . .P That\'ll show you that it\'s working\. If you\'d rather just create a symlink package that points to your working directory, then do this: . .IP "" 4 . .nf npm link . .fi . .IP "" 0 . .P Use \fBnpm ls \-g\fR to see if it\'s there\. . .P To test a local install, go into some other folder, and then do: . .IP "" 4 . .nf cd \.\./some\-other\-folder npm install \.\./my\-package . .fi . .IP "" 0 . .P to install it locally into the node_modules folder in that other place\. . .P Then go into the node\-repl, and try using require("my\-thing") to bring in your module\'s main module\. . .SH "Create a User Account" Create a user with the adduser command\. It works like this: . .IP "" 4 . .nf npm adduser . .fi . .IP "" 0 . .P and then follow the prompts\. . .P npm help This is documented better in npm\-adduser\. . .SH "Publish your package" This part\'s easy\. IN the root of your folder, do this: . .IP "" 4 . .nf npm publish . .fi . .IP "" 0 . .P You can give publish a url to a tarball, or a filename of a tarball, or a path to a folder\. . .P Note that pretty much \fBeverything in that folder will be exposed\fR by default\. So, if you have secret stuff in there, use a \fB\.npmignore\fR file to list out the globs to ignore, or publish from a fresh checkout\. . .SH "Brag about it" Send emails, write blogs, blab in IRC\. . .P Tell the world how easy it is to install your program! . .SH "SEE ALSO" . .IP "\(bu" 4 npm help faq . .IP "\(bu" 4 npm help npm . .IP "\(bu" 4 npm help init . .IP "\(bu" 4 npm help package\.json . .IP "\(bu" 4 npm help scripts . .IP "\(bu" 4 npm help publish . .IP "\(bu" 4 npm help adduser . .IP "\(bu" 4 npm help registry . .IP "" 0