palletjack

Pack up files for distribution using a manifest file of glob patterns and a gitignore.

Example manifest for a Python project:

include:
  - .dockerignore
  - LICENSE
  - MANIFEST.in
  - CHANGELOG.md
  - requirements.txt
  - setup.py
  - docker/standalone/*
  - mylib/**/*.py
  - mylib/extension/**/*.{h,cc,i}
  - examples/asset.obj
  - scripts/run_simulation.py

exclude:
  - '**/test_*.py'
  - mylib/testing_helpers.py
  - mylib/internal_diagnostics.py

rename:
  - from: README-client.md
    to: README.md

Motivation

In my contracting work, I'm often shipping code to a client that is maintained in an internal repository. The client needs the production code, client-facing readme, and scripts. They don't need my internal developer notes, CI config, test assets, and so on. Generally they don't need all the gitignored bits, like generated code, caches, and .DS_Store, though in certain cases I want to do the code generation for them, and it is important to ship a gitignored, generated file.

It's easy enough to write a script to select certain files and copy them into a tarball or another git repository.

As the project evolve and matures, new files are added, and it's important to correctly classify them – for inclusion or exclusion.

This program does four things:

• Interpret a tree, manifest file of glob patterns, and a gitignore file into a list of included files.
• Show you the reason each matched file is included, and the reason each unmatched file was excluded. The output of palletjack --verbose includes five lists:
  • Included by manifest
  • Excluded by manifest
  • Included by manifest override
  • Not in manifest
  • Gitignored and not in manfiest
• Export a project to another folder, using the interpreted manifest file. When exporting to a Git repository, the contents of the working tree are replaced with the exported contents.
• Rename files during export. This is useful for having an internal readme that's different from the readme that gets shipped.

Installation

Requires Node 12+.

npm install palletjack

Use without installing:

npx palletjack --export outdir manifest.yml

Or install globally:

npm install -g palletjack

Development

Run npm run dev to start a development server which watches for changes in the local files. Then you can run /path/to/palletjack/dist/cli.js, or with sourcemap support:

node -r /path/to/palletjack/node_modules/source-map-support/register /path/to/palletjack/dist/cli.js

License

The project is licensed under the MIT license.