npmluau

This utility can be used to allow Luau projects to use npm as a package manager. It lets your projects use string requires: use relative file paths for the project's files or prefix your dependency names with @pkg to use them.

If you are developing on a platform that does not support requires with, you can use a tool like darklua to automatically convert requires into your platform specific implementation.

How to use

Add npmluau in your dev-dependencies:

yarn add --dev npmluau

Or if you are using npm:

npm install --save-dev npmluau

In your Luau project package.json file, add a prepare script to run npmluau:

  "scripts": {
    "prepare": "npmluau",
  }

How it works

This utility will generate a folder named .luau-aliases inside node_modules after installing your dependencies that contains module links to each dependency.

Luau-lsp:

If you using the VS code extension, you can define a directory alias in your workspace settings:

{
  "luau-lsp.require.directoryAliases": {
    "@pkg": "node_modules/.luau-aliases"
  }
}

If you are also running luau-lsp from the command line interface, you can provide the directory aliases within a configuration file and pass it to the --settings argument:

{
  "luau-lsp.require.mode": "relativeToFile",
  "luau-lsp.require.directoryAliases": {
    "@pkg": "node_modules/.luau-aliases"
  }
}