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12 <h1><a href="../misc/npm-developers.html">npm-developers</a></h1> <p>Developer Guide</p>
13 <h2 id="description">DESCRIPTION</h2>
14 <p>So, you've decided to use npm to develop (and maybe publish/deploy)
17 <p>There are a few things that you need to do above the simple steps
18 that your users will do to install your program.</p>
19 <h2 id="about-these-documents">About These Documents</h2>
20 <p>These are man pages. If you install npm, you should be able to
21 then do <code>man npm-thing</code> to get the documentation on a particular
22 topic, or <code>npm help thing</code> to see the same information.</p>
23 <h2 id="what-is-a-package-">What is a <code>package</code></h2>
26 <li>a) a folder containing a program described by a package.json file</li>
27 <li>b) a gzipped tarball containing (a)</li>
28 <li>c) a url that resolves to (b)</li>
29 <li>d) a <code><name>@<version></code> that is published on the registry with (c)</li>
30 <li>e) a <code><name>@<tag></code> that points to (d)</li>
31 <li>f) a <code><name></code> that has a "latest" tag satisfying (e)</li>
32 <li>g) a <code>git</code> url that, when cloned, results in (a).</li>
34 <p>Even if you never publish your package, you can still get a lot of
35 benefits of using npm if you just want to write a node program (a), and
36 perhaps if you also want to be able to easily install it elsewhere
37 after packing it up into a tarball (b).</p>
38 <p>Git urls can be of the form:</p>
39 <pre><code>git://github.com/user/project.git#commit-ish
40 git+ssh://user@hostname:project.git#commit-ish
41 git+http://user@hostname/project/blah.git#commit-ish
42 git+https://user@hostname/project/blah.git#commit-ish
43 </code></pre><p>The <code>commit-ish</code> can be any tag, sha, or branch which can be supplied as
44 an argument to <code>git checkout</code>. The default is <code>master</code>.</p>
45 <h2 id="the-package-json-file">The package.json File</h2>
46 <p>You need to have a <code>package.json</code> file in the root of your project to do
47 much of anything with npm. That is basically the whole interface.</p>
48 <p>See <code><a href="../files/package.json.html">package.json(5)</a></code> for details about what goes in that file. At the very
52 This should be a string that identifies your project. Please do not
53 use the name to specify that it runs on node, or is in JavaScript.
54 You can use the "engines" field to explicitly state the versions of
55 node (or whatever else) that your program requires, and it's pretty
56 well assumed that it's javascript.</p>
57 <p>It does not necessarily need to match your github repository name.</p>
58 <p>So, <code>node-foo</code> and <code>bar-js</code> are bad names. <code>foo</code> or <code>bar</code> are better.</p>
61 A semver-compatible version.</p>
64 Specify the versions of node (or whatever else) that your program
65 runs on. The node API changes a lot, and there may be bugs or new
66 functionality that you depend on. Be explicit.</p>
72 If you have a special compilation or installation script, then you
73 should put it in the <code>scripts</code> object. You should definitely have at
74 least a basic smoke-test command as the "scripts.test" field.
75 See <a href="../misc/npm-scripts.html">npm-scripts(7)</a>.</p>
78 If you have a single module that serves as the entry point to your
79 program (like what the "foo" package gives you at require("foo")),
80 then you need to specify that in the "main" field.</p>
83 This is an object mapping names to folders. The best ones to include are
84 "lib" and "doc", but if you use "man" to specify a folder full of man pages,
85 they'll get installed just like these ones.</p>
88 <p>You can use <code>npm init</code> in the root of your package in order to get you
89 started with a pretty basic package.json file. See <code><a href="../cli/npm-init.html">npm-init(1)</a></code> for
91 <h2 id="keeping-files-out-of-your-package">Keeping files <em>out</em> of your package</h2>
92 <p>Use a <code>.npmignore</code> file to keep stuff out of your package. If there's
93 no <code>.npmignore</code> file, but there <em>is</em> a <code>.gitignore</code> file, then npm will
94 ignore the stuff matched by the <code>.gitignore</code> file. If you <em>want</em> to
95 include something that is excluded by your <code>.gitignore</code> file, you can
96 create an empty <code>.npmignore</code> file to override it. Like <code>git</code>, <code>npm</code> looks
97 for <code>.npmignore</code> and <code>.gitignore</code> files in all subdirectories of your
98 package, not only the root directory.</p>
99 <p><code>.npmignore</code> files follow the <a href="https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Basics-Recording-Changes-to-the-Repository#Ignoring-Files">same pattern rules</a>
100 as <code>.gitignore</code> files:</p>
102 <li>Blank lines or lines starting with <code>#</code> are ignored.</li>
103 <li>Standard glob patterns work.</li>
104 <li>You can end patterns with a forward slash <code>/</code> to specify a directory.</li>
105 <li>You can negate a pattern by starting it with an exclamation point <code>!</code>.</li>
107 <p>By default, the following paths and files are ignored, so there's no
108 need to add them to <code>.npmignore</code> explicitly:</p>
110 <li><code>.*.swp</code></li>
111 <li><code>._*</code></li>
112 <li><code>.DS_Store</code></li>
113 <li><code>.git</code></li>
114 <li><code>.hg</code></li>
115 <li><code>.npmrc</code></li>
116 <li><code>.lock-wscript</code></li>
117 <li><code>.svn</code></li>
118 <li><code>.wafpickle-*</code></li>
119 <li><code>config.gypi</code></li>
120 <li><code>CVS</code></li>
121 <li><code>npm-debug.log</code></li>
123 <p>Additionally, everything in <code>node_modules</code> is ignored, except for
124 bundled dependencies. npm automatically handles this for you, so don't
125 bother adding <code>node_modules</code> to <code>.npmignore</code>.</p>
126 <p>The following paths and files are never ignored, so adding them to
127 <code>.npmignore</code> is pointless:</p>
129 <li><code>package.json</code></li>
130 <li><code><a href="../../doc/README.html">README</a></code> (and its variants)</li>
131 <li><code>CHANGELOG</code> (and its variants)</li>
132 <li><code>LICENSE</code> / <code>LICENCE</code></li>
134 <h2 id="link-packages">Link Packages</h2>
135 <p><code>npm link</code> is designed to install a development package and see the
136 changes in real time without having to keep re-installing it. (You do
137 need to either re-link or <code>npm rebuild -g</code> to update compiled packages,
139 <p>More info at <code><a href="../cli/npm-link.html">npm-link(1)</a></code>.</p>
140 <h2 id="before-publishing-make-sure-your-package-installs-and-works">Before Publishing: Make Sure Your Package Installs and Works</h2>
141 <p><strong>This is important.</strong></p>
142 <p>If you can not install it locally, you'll have
143 problems trying to publish it. Or, worse yet, you'll be able to
144 publish it, but you'll be publishing a broken or pointless package.
145 So don't do that.</p>
146 <p>In the root of your package, do this:</p>
147 <pre><code>npm install . -g
148 </code></pre><p>That'll show you that it's working. If you'd rather just create a symlink
149 package that points to your working directory, then do this:</p>
151 </code></pre><p>Use <code>npm ls -g</code> to see if it's there.</p>
152 <p>To test a local install, go into some other folder, and then do:</p>
153 <pre><code>cd ../some-other-folder
154 npm install ../my-package
155 </code></pre><p>to install it locally into the node_modules folder in that other place.</p>
156 <p>Then go into the node-repl, and try using require("my-thing") to
157 bring in your module's main module.</p>
158 <h2 id="create-a-user-account">Create a User Account</h2>
159 <p>Create a user with the adduser command. It works like this:</p>
160 <pre><code>npm adduser
161 </code></pre><p>and then follow the prompts.</p>
162 <p>This is documented better in <a href="../cli/npm-adduser.html">npm-adduser(1)</a>.</p>
163 <h2 id="publish-your-package">Publish your package</h2>
164 <p>This part's easy. In the root of your folder, do this:</p>
165 <pre><code>npm publish
166 </code></pre><p>You can give publish a url to a tarball, or a filename of a tarball,
167 or a path to a folder.</p>
168 <p>Note that pretty much <strong>everything in that folder will be exposed</strong>
169 by default. So, if you have secret stuff in there, use a
170 <code>.npmignore</code> file to list out the globs to ignore, or publish
171 from a fresh checkout.</p>
172 <h2 id="brag-about-it">Brag about it</h2>
173 <p>Send emails, write blogs, blab in IRC.</p>
174 <p>Tell the world how easy it is to install your program!</p>
175 <h2 id="see-also">SEE ALSO</h2>
177 <li><a href="../misc/npm-faq.html">npm-faq(7)</a></li>
178 <li><a href="../cli/npm.html">npm(1)</a></li>
179 <li><a href="../cli/npm-init.html">npm-init(1)</a></li>
180 <li><a href="../files/package.json.html">package.json(5)</a></li>
181 <li><a href="../misc/npm-scripts.html">npm-scripts(7)</a></li>
182 <li><a href="../cli/npm-publish.html">npm-publish(1)</a></li>
183 <li><a href="../cli/npm-adduser.html">npm-adduser(1)</a></li>
184 <li><a href="../misc/npm-registry.html">npm-registry(7)</a></li>
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198 <p id="footer">npm-developers — npm@2.15.11</p>
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