dont-really

Easily publish throwaway versions of a package to a local npm registry.

The problem

You are making changes to a library that is used by other packages. You want a quick way to see how the changes impact your consumers.

Adding the library using the file:// prefix copies whole directory into the package's node modules. This is different to adding the library from a remote registry. In the remote case, only files that have been published are put into the package's node modules. These published files are controlled by the library's package.json and .npmignore files.

These difference can lead to errors that are false positives, or worse, errors that are undiscovered. 😡

The solution

dont-really is a utility that provides an easy way of publishing to and adding packages from a local npm registry. This makes it painless to publish local versions of a library and add those versions in other packages. Your library will be added in the same way it would be in the wild. You are now consuming your library in the same way your users do. Hurray! 🙌

Usage

Substitute yarn or npm with dont-really.

From the directory of the package you want to publish locally:

dont-really publish

To add the package from the local registry:

dont-really add [options] <package-name>

Or if you are using npm:

dont-really install [options] <package-name>

Installation

This package uses the awesome Docker image provided by verdaccio to create the local registry.

Step one is to ensure you have Docker installed and running. If you need to install Docker, follow the Docker installation docs to get setup. Verify Docker is running with:

docker --version

Download and start the verdaccio Docker image by running:

docker run -it -d --name verdaccio -p 4873:4873 verdaccio/verdaccio

You can now visit the local registry at http://localhost:4873.

Add yourself as a user on the local registry with:

npm adduser --registry http://localhost:4873

This allows you to publish packages to the local registry.

Finally run:

yarn global add dont-really

Thats it! 🎉