np

A better npm publish

Why

• Interactive UI
• Ensures you are publishing from your release branch (main and master by default)
• Ensures the working directory is clean and that there are no unpulled changes
• Reinstalls dependencies to ensure your project works with the latest dependency tree
• Ensures your Node.js and npm versions are supported by the project and its dependencies
• Runs the tests
• Bumps the version in package.json and npm-shrinkwrap.json (if present) and creates a git tag
• Prevents accidental publishing of pre-release versions under the latest dist-tag
• Publishes the new version to npm, optionally under a dist-tag
• Rolls back the project to its previous state in case publishing fails
• Pushes commits and tags (newly & previously created) to GitHub/GitLab
• Supports two-factor authentication
• Enables two-factor authentication on new repositories (does not apply to external registries)
• Opens a prefilled GitHub Releases draft after publish
• Warns about the possibility of extraneous files being published
• See exactly what will be executed with preview mode, without pushing or publishing anything remotely
• Supports GitHub Packages
• Supports npm 9+, Yarn (Classic and Berry), npm 8+, and Bun

Why not

• Monorepos are not supported.
• Custom registries are not supported (but could be with your help).
• CI is not an ideal environment for np. It's meant to be used locally as an interactive tool.

Prerequisite

• Node.js 18 or later
• npm 9 or later
• Git 2.11 or later

Install

npm install --global np

Usage

$ np --help

  Usage
    $ np <version>

    Version can be:
      patch | minor | major | prepatch | preminor | premajor | prerelease | 1.2.3

  Options
    --any-branch            Allow publishing from any branch
    --branch                Name of the release branch (default: main | master)
    --no-cleanup            Skips cleanup of node_modules
    --no-tests              Skips tests
    --yolo                  Skips cleanup and testing
    --no-publish            Skips publishing
    --preview               Show tasks without actually executing them
    --tag                   Publish under a given dist-tag
    --contents              Subdirectory to publish
    --no-release-draft      Skips opening a GitHub release draft
    --release-draft-only    Only opens a GitHub release draft for the latest published version
    --test-script           Name of npm run script to run tests before publishing (default: test)
    --no-2fa                Don't enable 2FA on new packages (not recommended)
    --message               Version bump commit message, '%s' will be replaced with version (default: '%s' with npm and 'v%s' with yarn)
    --package-manager       Use a specific package manager (default: 'packageManager' field in package.json)

  Examples
    $ np
    $ np patch
    $ np 1.0.2
    $ np 1.0.2-beta.3 --tag=beta
    $ np 1.0.2-beta.3 --tag=beta --contents=dist

Interactive UI

Run np without arguments to launch the interactive UI that guides you through publishing a new version.

Config

np can be configured both globally and locally. When using the global np binary, you can configure any of the CLI flags in either a .np-config.js (as CJS), .np-config.cjs, .np-config.mjs, or .np-config.json file in the home directory. When using the local np binary, for example, in a npm run script, you can configure np by setting the flags in either a top-level np field in package.json or in one of the aforementioned file types in the project directory. If it exists, the local installation will always take precedence. This ensures any local config matches the version of np it was designed for.

Currently, these are the flags you can configure:

• anyBranch - Allow publishing from any branch (false by default).
• branch - Name of the release branch (main or master by default).
• cleanup - Cleanup node_modules (true by default).
• tests - Run npm test (true by default).
• yolo - Skip cleanup and testing (false by default).
• publish - Publish (true by default).
• preview - Show tasks without actually executing them (false by default).
• tag - Publish under a given dist-tag (latest by default).
• contents - Subdirectory to publish (. by default).
• releaseDraft - Open a GitHub release draft after releasing (true by default).
• testScript - Name of npm run script to run tests before publishing (test by default).
• 2fa - Enable 2FA on new packages (true by default) (setting this to false is not recommended).
• message - The commit message used for the version bump. Any %s in the string will be replaced with the new version. By default, npm uses %s and Yarn uses v%s.
• packageManager - Set the package manager to be used. Defaults to the packageManager field in package.json, so only use if you can't update package.json for some reason.

For example, this configures np to use unit-test as a test script, and to use dist as the subdirectory to publish:

package.json

{
	"name": "superb-package",
	"np": {
		"testScript": "unit-test",
		"contents": "dist"
	}
}

.np-config.json

{
	"testScript": "unit-test",
	"contents": "dist"
}

.np-config.js or .np-config.cjs

module.exports = {
	testScript: 'unit-test',
	contents: 'dist'
};

.np-config.mjs

export default {
	testScript: 'unit-test',
	contents: 'dist'
};

Note: The global config only applies when using the global np binary, and is never inherited when using a local binary.

Tips

npm hooks

You can use any of the test/version/publish related npm lifecycle hooks in your package.json to add extra behavior.

For example, here we build the documentation before tagging the release:

{
	"name": "my-awesome-package",
	"scripts": {
		"version": "./build-docs && git add docs"
	}
}

Release script

You can also add np to a custom script in package.json. This can be useful if you want all maintainers of a package to release the same way (Not forgetting to push Git tags, for example). However, you can't use publish as name of your script because it's an npm defined lifecycle hook.

{
	"name": "my-awesome-package",
	"scripts": {
		"release": "np"
	},
	"devDependencies": {
		"np": "*"
	}
}

User-defined tests

If you want to run a user-defined test script before publishing instead of the normal npm test or yarn test, you can use --test-script flag or the testScript config. This can be useful when your normal test script is running with a --watch flag or in case you want to run some specific tests (maybe on the packaged files) before publishing.

For example, np --test-script=publish-test would run the publish-test script instead of the default test.

{
	"name": "my-awesome-package",
	"scripts": {
		"test": "ava --watch",
		"publish-test": "ava"
	},
	"devDependencies": {
		"np": "*"
	}
}

Signed Git tag

Set the sign-git-tag npm config to have the Git tag signed:

$ npm config set sign-git-tag true

Or set the version-sign-git-tag Yarn config:

$ yarn config set version-sign-git-tag true

Private packages

You can use np for packages that aren't publicly published to npm (perhaps installed from a private git repo).

Set "private": true in your package.json and the publishing step will be skipped. All other steps including versioning and pushing tags will still be completed.

Public scoped packages

To publish scoped packages to the public registry, you need to set the access level to public. You can do that by adding the following to your package.json:

"publishConfig": {
	"access": "public"
}

If publishing a scoped package for the first time, np will prompt you to ask if you want to publish it publicly.

Note: When publishing a scoped package, the first ever version you publish has to be done interactively using np. If not, you cannot use np to publish future versions of the package.

Private Org-scoped packages

To publish a private Org-scoped package, you need to set the access level to restricted. You can do that by adding the following to your package.json:

"publishConfig": {
	"access": "restricted"
}

Publish to a custom registry

Set the registry option in package.json to the URL of your registry:

"publishConfig": {
	"registry": "https://my-internal-registry.local"
}

Package managers

If a package manager is not set in package.json, via configuration (packageManager), or via the CLI (--package-manager), np will attempt to infer the best package manager to use by looking for lockfiles. But it's recommended to set the packageManager field in your package.json to be consistent with other tools. See also the corepack docs.

Publish with a CI

If you use a Continuous Integration server to publish your tagged commits, use the --no-publish flag to skip the publishing step of np.

Publish to gh-pages

To publish to gh-pages (or any other branch that serves your static assets), install branchsite, an np-like CLI tool aimed to complement np, and create an npm "post" hook that runs after np.

npm install --save-dev branchsite

"scripts": {
	"deploy": "np",
	"postdeploy": "bs"
}

Initial version

For new packages, start the version field in package.json at 0.0.0 and let np bump it to 1.0.0 or 0.1.0 when publishing.

Release an update to an old major version

To release a minor/patch version for an old major version, create a branch from the major version's git tag and run np:

$ git checkout -b fix-old-bug v1.0.0 # Where 1.0.0 is the previous major version
# Create some commits…
$ git push --set-upstream origin HEAD
$ np patch --any-branch --tag=v1

The prerequisite step runs forever on macOS

If you're using macOS Sierra 10.12.2 or later, your SSH key passphrase is no longer stored into the keychain by default. This may cause the prerequisite step to run forever because it prompts for your passphrase in the background. To fix this, add the following lines to your ~/.ssh/config and run a simple Git command like git fetch.

Host *
 AddKeysToAgent yes
 UseKeychain yes

If you're running into other issues when using SSH, please consult GitHub's support article.

Ignore strategy

The ignore strategy, either maintained in the files-property in package.json or in .npmignore, is meant to help reduce the package size. To avoid broken packages caused by essential files being accidentally ignored, np prints out all the new and unpublished files added to Git. Test files and other common files that are never published are not considered. np assumes either a standard directory layout or a customized layout represented in the directories property in package.json.

FAQ

I get an error when publishing my package through Yarn

If you get an error like this…

❯ Prerequisite check
✔ Ping npm registry
✔ Check npm version
✔ Check yarn version
✖ Verify user is authenticated

npm ERR! code E403
npm ERR! 403 Forbidden - GET https://registry.yarnpkg.com/-/package/my-awesome-package/collaborators?format=cli - Forbidden

…please check whether the command npm access list collaborators my-awesome-package succeeds. If it doesn't, Yarn has overwritten your registry URL. To fix this, add the correct registry URL to package.json:

"publishConfig": {
	"registry": "https://registry.npmjs.org"
}

Maintainers

• Sindre Sorhus
• Tommy Mitchell