NAME¶
npm-developers - Developer Guide
DESCRIPTION¶
So, you´ve decided to use npm to develop (and maybe publish/deploy) your
project.
Fantastic!
There are a few things that you need to do above the simple steps that your
users will do to install your program.
About These Documents¶
These are man pages. If you install npm, you should be able to then do
man
npm-thing to get the documentation on a particular topic, or
npm help
thing to see the same information.
What is a <code>package</code>¶
A package is:
- •
- a) a folder containing a program described by a package.json file
- •
- b) a gzipped tarball containing (a)
- •
- c) a url that resolves to (b)
- •
- d) a <name>@<version> that is published on the registry
with (c)
- •
- e) a <name>@<tag> that points to (d)
- •
- f) a <name> that has a "latest" tag satisfying
(e)
- •
- g) a git url that, when cloned, results in (a).
-
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).
Git urls can be of the form:
-
-
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
-
The
commit-ish can be any tag, sha, or branch which can be supplied as an
argument to
git checkout. The default is
master.
The package.json File¶
You need to have a
package.json file in the root of your project to do
much of anything with npm. That is basically the whole interface.
npm help See
package.json for details about what goes in that file. At
the very least, you need:
- 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.
- It does not necessarily need to match your github repository name.
- So, node-foo and bar-js are bad names. foo or
bar are better.
- version
- A semver-compatible version.
- 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.
- author
- Take some credit.
- scripts
- npm help If you have a special compilation or installation script, then
you should put it in the scripts hash. You should definitely have
at least a basic smoke-test command as the "scripts.test" field.
See npm-scripts.
- 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.
- 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.
npm help You can use
npm init in the root of your package in order to get
you started with a pretty basic package.json file. See
npm-init for
more info.
Keeping files <em>out</em> of your package¶
Use a
.npmignore file to keep stuff out of your package. If
there´s no
.npmignore file, but there
is a
.gitignore file, then npm will ignore the stuff matched by the
.gitignore file. If you
want to include something that is
excluded by your
.gitignore file, you can create an empty
.npmignore file to override it.
By default, the following paths and files are ignored, so there´s no need
to add them to
.npmignore explicitly:
- •
- .*.swp
- •
- ._*
- •
- .DS_Store
- •
- .git
- •
- .hg
- •
- .lock-wscript
- •
- .svn
- •
- .wafpickle-*
- •
- CVS
- •
- npm-debug.log
-
Additionally, everything in
node_modules is ignored, except for bundled
dependencies. npm automatically handles this for you, so don´t bother
adding
node_modules to
.npmignore.
The following paths and files are never ignored, so adding them to
.npmignore is pointless:
- •
- package.json
- •
- README.*
-
Link Packages¶
npm link 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
npm rebuild -g to update compiled packages, of course.)
npm help More info at
npm-link.
Before Publishing: Make Sure Your Package Installs and Works¶
This is important.
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.
In the root of your package, do this:
-
-
npm install . -g
-
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:
-
-
npm link
-
Use
npm ls -g to see if it´s there.
To test a local install, go into some other folder, and then do:
-
-
cd ../some-other-folder
npm install ../my-package
-
to install it locally into the node_modules folder in that other place.
Then go into the node-repl, and try using require("my-thing") to bring
in your module´s main module.
Create a User Account¶
Create a user with the adduser command. It works like this:
-
-
npm adduser
-
and then follow the prompts.
npm help This is documented better in npm-adduser.
Publish your package¶
This part´s easy. IN the root of your folder, do this:
-
-
npm publish
-
You can give publish a url to a tarball, or a filename of a tarball, or a path
to a folder.
Note that pretty much
everything in that folder will be exposed by
default. So, if you have secret stuff in there, use a
.npmignore file
to list out the globs to ignore, or publish from a fresh checkout.
Brag about it¶
Send emails, write blogs, blab in IRC.
Tell the world how easy it is to install your program!
SEE ALSO¶
- •
- npm help faq
- •
- npm help npm
- •
- npm help init
- •
- npm help package.json
- •
- npm help scripts
- •
- npm help publish
- •
- npm help adduser
- •
- npm help registry
-
-