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| npm command-line interface
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| <section id="content">
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| <header class="title">
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| <h1 id="----developers----11130">
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| <span>Developers</span>
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| <span class="version">@11.13.0</span>
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| </h1>
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| <span class="description">Developer guide</span>
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| </header>
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|
|
| <section id="table_of_contents">
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| <h2 id="table-of-contents">Table of contents</h2>
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| <div id="_table_of_contents"><ul><li><a href="#description">Description</a></li><li><a href="#about-these-documents">About These Documents</a></li><li><a href="#what-is-a-package">What is a Package</a></li><li><a href="#the-packagejson-file">The package.json File</a></li><li><a href="#keeping-files-out-of-your-package">Keeping files <em>out</em> of your Package</a></li><ul><li><a href="#testing-whether-your-npmignore-or-files-config-works">Testing whether your <code>.npmignore</code> or <code>files</code> config works</a></li></ul><li><a href="#link-packages">Link Packages</a></li><li><a href="#before-publishing-make-sure-your-package-installs-and-works">Before Publishing: Make Sure Your Package Installs and Works</a></li><li><a href="#create-a-user-account">Create a User Account</a></li><li><a href="#publish-your-package">Publish your Package</a></li><li><a href="#brag-about-it">Brag about it</a></li><li><a href="#see-also">See also</a></li></ul></div>
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| </section>
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|
|
| <div id="_content"><h3 id="description">Description</h3>
|
| <p>So, you've decided to use npm to develop (and maybe publish/deploy) your project.</p>
|
| <p>Fantastic!</p>
|
| <p>There are a few things that you need to do above the simple steps that your users will do to install your program.</p>
|
| <h3 id="about-these-documents">About These Documents</h3>
|
| <p>These are man pages.
|
| If you install npm, you should be able to then do <code>man npm-thing</code> to get the documentation on a particular topic, or <code>npm help thing</code> to see the same information.</p>
|
| <h3 id="what-is-a-package">What is a Package</h3>
|
| <p>A package is:</p>
|
| <ul>
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| <li>a) a folder containing a program described by a package.json file</li>
|
| <li>b) a gzipped tarball containing (a)</li>
|
| <li>c) a url that resolves to (b)</li>
|
| <li>d) a <code><name>@<version></code> that is published on the registry with (c)</li>
|
| <li>e) a <code><name>@<tag></code> that points to (d)</li>
|
| <li>f) a <code><name></code> that has a "latest" tag satisfying (e)</li>
|
| <li>g) a <code>git</code> url that, when cloned, results in (a).</li>
|
| </ul>
|
| <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>
|
| <p>Git urls can be of the form:</p>
|
| <pre><code class="language-bash">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
|
| </code></pre>
|
| <p>The <code>commit-ish</code> can be any tag, sha, or branch which can be supplied as an argument to <code>git checkout</code>.
|
| The default is whatever the repository uses as its default branch.</p>
|
| <h3 id="the-packagejson-file">The package.json File</h3>
|
| <p>You need to have a <code>package.json</code> file in the root of your project to do much of anything with npm.
|
| That is basically the whole interface.</p>
|
| <p>See <a href="../configuring-npm/package-json.html"><code>package.json</code></a> for details about what goes in that file.
|
| At the very least, you need:</p>
|
| <ul>
|
| <li>
|
| <p>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.</p>
|
| <p>It does not necessarily need to match your github repository name.</p>
|
| <p>So, <code>node-foo</code> and <code>bar-js</code> are bad names.
|
| <code>foo</code> or <code>bar</code> are better.</p>
|
| </li>
|
| <li>
|
| <p>version: A semver-compatible version.</p>
|
| </li>
|
| <li>
|
| <p>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.</p>
|
| </li>
|
| <li>
|
| <p>author: Take some credit.</p>
|
| </li>
|
| <li>
|
| <p>scripts: If you have a special compilation or installation script, then you should put it in the <code>scripts</code> object.
|
| You should definitely have at least a basic smoke-test command as the "scripts.test" field.
|
| See <a href="../using-npm/scripts.html">scripts</a>.</p>
|
| </li>
|
| <li>
|
| <p>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.</p>
|
| </li>
|
| <li>
|
| <p>directories: This is an object mapping names to folders.
|
| The best ones to include are "lib" and "doc", but if you use "man" to specify a folder full of man pages, they'll get installed just like these ones.</p>
|
| </li>
|
| </ul>
|
| <p>You can use <code>npm init</code> in the root of your package in order to get you started with a pretty basic package.json file.
|
| See <a href="../commands/npm-init.html"><code>npm init</code></a> for more info.</p>
|
| <h3 id="keeping-files-out-of-your-package">Keeping files <em>out</em> of your Package</h3>
|
| <p>Use a <code>.npmignore</code> file to keep stuff out of your package.
|
| If there's no <code>.npmignore</code> file, but there <em>is</em> a <code>.gitignore</code> file, then npm will ignore the stuff matched by the <code>.gitignore</code> file.
|
| If you <em>want</em> to include something that is excluded by your <code>.gitignore</code> file, you can create an empty <code>.npmignore</code> file to override it.
|
| Like <code>git</code>, <code>npm</code> looks for <code>.npmignore</code> and <code>.gitignore</code> files in all subdirectories of your package, not only the root directory.</p>
|
| <p><code>.npmignore</code> files follow the <a href="https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Basics-Recording-Changes-to-the-Repository#_ignoring">same pattern rules</a> as <code>.gitignore</code> files:</p>
|
| <ul>
|
| <li>Blank lines or lines starting with <code>#</code> are ignored.</li>
|
| <li>Standard glob patterns work.</li>
|
| <li>You can end patterns with a forward slash <code>/</code> to specify a directory.</li>
|
| <li>You can negate a pattern by starting it with an exclamation point <code>!</code>.</li>
|
| </ul>
|
| <p>By default, some paths and files are ignored, so there's no need to add them to <code>.npmignore</code> explicitly.
|
| Some examples are:</p>
|
| <ul>
|
| <li><code>.*.swp</code></li>
|
| <li><code>._*</code></li>
|
| <li><code>.DS_Store</code></li>
|
| <li><code>.git</code></li>
|
| <li><code>.gitignore</code></li>
|
| <li><code>.hg</code></li>
|
| <li><code>.npmignore</code></li>
|
| <li><code>.npmrc</code></li>
|
| <li><code>.lock-wscript</code></li>
|
| <li><code>.svn</code></li>
|
| <li><code>.wafpickle-*</code></li>
|
| <li><code>config.gypi</code></li>
|
| <li><code>CVS</code></li>
|
| <li><code>npm-debug.log</code></li>
|
| </ul>
|
| <p>Additionally, everything in <code>node_modules</code> is ignored, except for bundled dependencies.
|
| npm automatically handles this for you, so don't bother adding <code>node_modules</code> to <code>.npmignore</code>.</p>
|
| <p>The following paths and files are never ignored, so adding them to <code>.npmignore</code> is pointless:</p>
|
| <ul>
|
| <li><code>package.json</code></li>
|
| <li><code>README</code> (and its variants)</li>
|
| <li><code>LICENSE</code> / <code>LICENCE</code></li>
|
| </ul>
|
| <p>If, given the structure of your project, you find <code>.npmignore</code> to be a maintenance headache, you might instead try populating the <code>files</code> property of <code>package.json</code>, which is an array of file or directory names that should be included in your package.
|
| Sometimes manually picking which items to allow is easier to manage than building a block list.</p>
|
| <p>See <a href="../configuring-npm/package-json.html"><code>package.json</code></a> for more info on what can and can't be ignored.</p>
|
| <h4 id="testing-whether-your-npmignore-or-files-config-works">Testing whether your <code>.npmignore</code> or <code>files</code> config works</h4>
|
| <p>If you want to double check that your package will include only the files you intend it to when published, you can run the <code>npm pack</code> command locally which will generate a tarball in the working directory, the same way it does for publishing.</p>
|
| <h3 id="link-packages">Link Packages</h3>
|
| <p><code>npm link</code> 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 <code>npm rebuild -g</code> to update compiled packages, of course.)</p>
|
| <p>More info at <a href="../commands/npm-link.html"><code>npm link</code></a>.</p>
|
| <h3 id="before-publishing-make-sure-your-package-installs-and-works">Before Publishing: Make Sure Your Package Installs and Works</h3>
|
| <p><strong>This is important.</strong></p>
|
| <p>If you cannot 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>
|
| <p>In the root of your package, do this:</p>
|
| <pre><code class="language-bash">npm install . -g
|
| </code></pre>
|
| <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:</p>
|
| <pre><code class="language-bash">npm link
|
| </code></pre>
|
| <p>Use <code>npm ls -g</code> to see if it's there.</p>
|
| <p>To test a local install, go into some other folder, and then do:</p>
|
| <pre><code class="language-bash">cd ../some-other-folder
|
| npm install ../my-package
|
| </code></pre>
|
| <p>to install it locally into the node_modules folder in that other place.</p>
|
| <p>Then go into the node-repl, and try using require("my-thing") to bring in your module's main module.</p>
|
| <h3 id="create-a-user-account">Create a User Account</h3>
|
| <p>Create a user with the adduser command.
|
| It works like this:</p>
|
| <pre><code class="language-bash">npm adduser
|
| </code></pre>
|
| <p>and then follow the prompts.</p>
|
| <p>This is documented better in <a href="../commands/npm-adduser.html">npm adduser</a>.</p>
|
| <h3 id="publish-your-package">Publish your Package</h3>
|
| <p>This part's easy.
|
| In the root of your folder, do this:</p>
|
| <pre><code class="language-bash">npm publish
|
| </code></pre>
|
| <p>You can give publish a url to a tarball, or a filename of a tarball, or a path to a folder.</p>
|
| <p>Note that pretty much <strong>everything in that folder will be exposed</strong> by default.
|
| So, if you have secret stuff in there, use a <code>.npmignore</code> file to list out the globs to ignore, or publish from a fresh checkout.</p>
|
| <h3 id="brag-about-it">Brag about it</h3>
|
| <p>Send emails, write blogs, blab in IRC.</p>
|
| <p>Tell the world how easy it is to install your program!</p>
|
| <h3 id="see-also">See also</h3>
|
| <ul>
|
| <li><a href="../commands/npm.html">npm</a></li>
|
| <li><a href="../commands/npm-init.html">npm init</a></li>
|
| <li><a href="../configuring-npm/package-json.html">package.json</a></li>
|
| <li><a href="../using-npm/scripts.html">npm scripts</a></li>
|
| <li><a href="../commands/npm-publish.html">npm publish</a></li>
|
| <li><a href="../commands/npm-adduser.html">npm adduser</a></li>
|
| <li><a href="../using-npm/registry.html">npm registry</a></li>
|
| </ul></div>
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