mirror of https://github.com/lukechilds/node.git
You can not select more than 25 topics
Topics must start with a letter or number, can include dashes ('-') and can be up to 35 characters long.
208 lines
9.2 KiB
208 lines
9.2 KiB
<!doctype html>
|
|
<html>
|
|
<title>npm-developers</title>
|
|
<meta http-equiv="content-type" value="text/html;utf-8">
|
|
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../../static/style.css">
|
|
|
|
<body>
|
|
<div id="wrapper">
|
|
<h1><a href="../misc/npm-developers.html">npm-developers</a></h1> <p>Developer Guide</p>
|
|
|
|
<h2 id="DESCRIPTION">DESCRIPTION</h2>
|
|
|
|
<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>
|
|
|
|
<h2 id="About-These-Documents">About These Documents</h2>
|
|
|
|
<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>
|
|
|
|
<h2 id="What-is-a-package">What is a <code>package</code></h2>
|
|
|
|
<p>A package is:</p>
|
|
|
|
<ul><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>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 <code>master</code>.</p>
|
|
|
|
<h2 id="The-package-json-File">The package.json File</h2>
|
|
|
|
<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 <code><a href="../files/package.json.html">package.json(5)</a></code> 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> hash. You should definitely have at
|
|
least a basic smoke-test command as the "scripts.test" field.
|
|
See <a href="../misc/npm-scripts.html">npm-scripts(7)</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 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></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 <code><a href="../cli/npm-init.html">npm-init(1)</a></code> for
|
|
more info.</p>
|
|
|
|
<h2 id="Keeping-files-out-of-your-package">Keeping files <em>out</em> of your package</h2>
|
|
|
|
<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.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>By default, the following paths and files are ignored, so there's no
|
|
need to add them to <code>.npmignore</code> explicitly:</p>
|
|
|
|
<ul><li><code>.*.swp</code></li><li><code>._*</code></li><li><code>.DS_Store</code></li><li><code>.git</code></li><li><code>.hg</code></li><li><code>.lock-wscript</code></li><li><code>.svn</code></li><li><code>.wafpickle-*</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><a href="../../doc/README.html">README</a>.*</code></li></ul>
|
|
|
|
<h2 id="Link-Packages">Link Packages</h2>
|
|
|
|
<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 <code><a href="../cli/npm-link.html">npm-link(1)</a></code>.</p>
|
|
|
|
<h2 id="Before-Publishing-Make-Sure-Your-Package-Installs-and-Works">Before Publishing: Make Sure Your Package Installs and Works</h2>
|
|
|
|
<p><strong>This is important.</strong></p>
|
|
|
|
<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>
|
|
|
|
<p>In the root of your package, do this:</p>
|
|
|
|
<pre><code>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>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>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>
|
|
|
|
<h2 id="Create-a-User-Account">Create a User Account</h2>
|
|
|
|
<p>Create a user with the adduser command. It works like this:</p>
|
|
|
|
<pre><code>npm adduser</code></pre>
|
|
|
|
<p>and then follow the prompts.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>This is documented better in <a href="../cli/npm-adduser.html">npm-adduser(1)</a>.</p>
|
|
|
|
<h2 id="Publish-your-package">Publish your package</h2>
|
|
|
|
<p>This part's easy. IN the root of your folder, do this:</p>
|
|
|
|
<pre><code>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>
|
|
|
|
<h2 id="Brag-about-it">Brag about it</h2>
|
|
|
|
<p>Send emails, write blogs, blab in IRC.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>Tell the world how easy it is to install your program!</p>
|
|
|
|
<h2 id="SEE-ALSO">SEE ALSO</h2>
|
|
|
|
<ul><li><a href="../misc/npm-faq.html">npm-faq(7)</a></li><li><a href="../cli/npm.html">npm(1)</a></li><li><a href="../cli/npm-init.html">npm-init(1)</a></li><li><a href="../files/package.json.html">package.json(5)</a></li><li><a href="../misc/npm-scripts.html">npm-scripts(7)</a></li><li><a href="../cli/npm-publish.html">npm-publish(1)</a></li><li><a href="../cli/npm-adduser.html">npm-adduser(1)</a></li><li><a href="../misc/npm-registry.html">npm-registry(7)</a></li></ul>
|
|
</div>
|
|
<p id="footer">npm-developers — npm@1.3.25</p>
|
|
<script>
|
|
;(function () {
|
|
var wrapper = document.getElementById("wrapper")
|
|
var els = Array.prototype.slice.call(wrapper.getElementsByTagName("*"), 0)
|
|
.filter(function (el) {
|
|
return el.parentNode === wrapper
|
|
&& el.tagName.match(/H[1-6]/)
|
|
&& el.id
|
|
})
|
|
var l = 2
|
|
, toc = document.createElement("ul")
|
|
toc.innerHTML = els.map(function (el) {
|
|
var i = el.tagName.charAt(1)
|
|
, out = ""
|
|
while (i > l) {
|
|
out += "<ul>"
|
|
l ++
|
|
}
|
|
while (i < l) {
|
|
out += "</ul>"
|
|
l --
|
|
}
|
|
out += "<li><a href='#" + el.id + "'>" +
|
|
( el.innerText || el.text || el.innerHTML)
|
|
+ "</a>"
|
|
return out
|
|
}).join("\n")
|
|
toc.id = "toc"
|
|
document.body.appendChild(toc)
|
|
})()
|
|
</script>
|
|
|