@pkgdep/extra

Installs extra configured NPM packages without saving them as dependencies to package.json.

If you want to install a part of NPM dependencies using the package configuration and the package lock and another part without it, using npm i --no-save, this package will help you to automate it.

If you link NPM packages together during the development and you're affected by the problem that npm i and npm ln delete one another packages that the other one added, have a look at @pkgdep/link. It plays well with dep-extra.

# doesn't work                 # works well
npm ci                          npm ci
npm i --no-save some-package    dep-extra i some-package
npm ln other-package            dep-link ln other-package

Synopsis

Add an extra dependency on some-package:

dep-extra i some-package@^2.0.0

The contents of package.json:

{
  // prepare the project for extra dependencies
  "scripts": {
    "prepare": "dep-extra i"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "@pkgdep/extra": "^1.0.0"
  },
  // added by "dep-extra i ..."
  "extraDependencies": {
    "some-package": "^2.0.0"
  }
}

Installation

This module can be installed in your project using NPM. Make sure, that you use Node.js version 16.14 or newer.

npm i -D @pkgdep/extra

Package managers PNPM and Yarn aren't supported, because they didn't implement the command-line flag --no-save.

Usage

If you need to install extra NPM packages, which aren't managed by package.json, you have to do it after installing the managed dependencies:

npm ci
npm i --no-save some-package

If you need to keep more extra NPM packages installed, repeated re-installations will make your work inefficient. You can enable automatic installation of the extra NPM packages together with the managed ones:

npx dep-extra s
npx dep-extra i some-package

And the installation of both managed and extra NPM packages will become simpler:

npm ci

The contents of package.json will be extended with a preparation script, a development dependency and a section for the extra dependencies:

{
  "scripts": {
    "prepare": "dep-extra i"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "@pkgdep/extra": "^1.0.0"
  },
  "extraDependencies": {
    "some-package": "^2.0.0"
  }
}

If you want to store the extra dependencies outside of package.json, you can request the file name package-extras.json, which will be tried by default before package.json:

npx dep-extra s -c package-extras.json

If you want to automate linking of NPM packages, you can engage @pkgdep/link too. See the example on the project page.

Command-line Interface

Usage: dep-extra [-cdsbplv] <command> [--] [package...]

Commands:
  setup|s                   prepare a NPM project to use @pkgdep/extra
  install|i|add             install an extra dependency and if none
                            provided, read the configuration file
  uninstall|un|remove|rm|r  uninstall an extra dependency

Options:
  -c|--config <file>    configuration file with the dependencies
  -d|--directory <dir>  directory in which to run the npm commands   (.)
  -s|--[no-]save        save the arguments to the configuration file (true)
  -b|--[no-]line-break  end the configuration file with a line break (true)
  -p|--[no-]progress    enable progress output for the npm commands  (true)
  -l|--[no-]list        enable listing the extra installed packages  (true)
  -v|--[no-]verbose     enable verbose output for the npm commands   (false)
  --dry-run             only print what packages would be installed  (false)
  -V|--version          print version number
  -h|--help             print usage instructions

The default configuration file is package-extras.json in the package root and
if not found, then package.json. The file should include extraDependencies.

Examples:
$ dep-extra
$ dep-extra i my-dep
$ dep-extra i -d test -v

Contributing

In lieu of a formal styleguide, take care to maintain the existing coding style. Add unit tests for any new or changed functionality. Lint and test your code using npm test.

License

Copyright (c) 2023 Ferdinand Prantl

Licensed under the MIT license.