Webpack library starter

Webpack based boilerplate for producing libraries (Input: ES6, Output: universal library)

Features

• Webpack 4 based.
• ES6 as a source.
• Exports in a umd format so your library works everywhere.
• ES6 test setup with Mocha and Chai.
• Linting with ESLint.

Process

ES6 source files
       |
       |
    webpack
       |
       +--- babel, eslint
       |
  ready to use
     library
  in umd format

Have in mind that you have to build your library before publishing. The files under the lib folder are the ones that should be distributed.

Getting started

1. Setting up the name of your library

• Open webpack.config.js file and change the value of libraryName variable.
• Open package.json file and change the value of main property so it matches the name of your library.

2. Build your library

• Run yarn install (recommended) or npm install to get the project's dependencies
• Run yarn build or npm run build to produce minified version of your library.

3. Development mode

• Having all the dependencies installed run yarn dev or npm run dev. This command will generate an non-minified version of your library and will run a watcher so you get the compilation on file change.

4. Running the tests

• Run yarn test or npm run test

Scripts

• yarn build or npm run build - produces production version of your library under the lib folder
• yarn dev or npm run dev - produces development version of your library and runs a watcher
• yarn test or npm run test - well ... it runs the tests :)
• yarn test:watch or npm run test:watch - same as above but in a watch mode

Readings

• Start your own JavaScript library using webpack and ES6

Misc

An example of using dependencies that shouldn’t be resolved by webpack, but should become dependencies of the resulting bundle

In the following example we are excluding React and Lodash:

{
  devtool: 'source-map',
  output: {
    path: '...',
    libraryTarget: 'umd',
    library: '...'
  },
  entry: '...',
  ...
  externals: {
    react: 'react'
    // Use more complicated mapping for lodash.
    // We need to access it differently depending
    // on the environment.
    lodash: {
      commonjs: 'lodash',
      commonjs2: 'lodash',
      amd: '_',
      root: '_'
    }
  }
}