CLI tool to create npm package (Currently Work In Progress. Not published to NPM.)

Why?

Often I had to create NPM packages, and I found myself creating the same boilerplate code again and again. For very simple and tiny CommonJS modules, I had to configure webpack differently than a library which I had to compile for UMD. TypeScript configuration and devDependencies were different than that of ES6. So, I figured better to create a CLI, which takes care of all that out of the box. Just answer few propmts, and the initial setup is done.

NOTE: You might not need it altogether, if you do not plan to use TypeScript or unsupported NodeJs features, like ES6 import. You can simply create your files in JavaScript, and publish it directly to NPM, without using any bundler or compiler.

It is needed when you are planning to expose the library as a <script> tag in browser, since you would want to use bundler to output one file which you can include in your HTML file. Or using experimental NodeJs features, and would want to use Babel compiler to convert it into more widely supported JavaScript.

How?

• npm install -g @a6kme/create-npm-package
• Run create-npm-package <YOUR_PACKAGE_NAME> command, and answer some prompts to create a folder with your package name.

After doing npm login in the terminal window, you can directly run npm publish --access public. It will test and build the package, and publish it on npm repository.

What?

Currently, the CLI tool is highly opinionated about the choice of tools it uses. It uses webpack for bundling, jest for testing, eslint for linting. It does the following for you

• Sets up the package directory with name of your package
• Creates package.json, with standard fields, like repository path, package name, and scripts for testing, linting etc.
• Initializes the git repository with .gitignore file
• Sets git remote origin with https://github.com/<YOUR_GIT_USERNAME>/<YOUR_PACKAGE_NAME>.git
• Adds eslint configuration file with appropriate parser
• Adds webpack builder configuration file

Check out my blog post about how to use this CLI at https://a6k.me/articles/how-to-create-and-publish-an-npm-package/