📦 decomment

decomment is a CLI tool to safely remove comments from JavaScript, TypeScript, JSX, TSX, and Vue files.

It performs AST-based comment removal to ensure code behavior is never changed. The tool is designed for production codebases, CI pipelines, and teams that care about safety, auditability, and reversibility.

Remove comments — and nothing else.

Features

• AST-based removal of single-line (//) and block (/* */) comments
• Preserves comments with specified prefixes (e.g. eslint-, @license)
• Supports JavaScript, MJS, JSX, TSX, and Vue (script section)
• Glob patterns for batch processing
• Optional configuration via decomment.config.js
• Dry-run mode to preview changes
• Statistics output (removed / kept comments)
• Automatic backup with full rollback support
• Cross-platform (Windows / macOS / Linux)

Installation

Global (recommended)

npm install -g @tomatobybike/decomment

or

yarn global add @tomatobybike/decomment --ignore-engines

Yarn v1 global install is not recommended due to legacy dependency constraints.

Local development

yarn add @tomatobybike/decomment

Usage

# Remove comments
decomment [options] [files/globs]

# Restore files from backups
decomment restore

# Remove all backup files
decomment clean

If no files or globs are provided, decomment scans the current directory by default.

Options

| Option | Description | | ------------ | -------------------------------------------- | | --dry-run | Preview changes without writing files | | --keep | Comma-separated comment prefixes to preserve | | --stats | Show number of comments removed and kept | | -h, --help | Show help message |

Default preserved prefixes:

eslint-, @license, @preserve

Examples

Remove comments from the current project (default behavior)

decomment

Equivalent to:

decomment "**/*.{js,mjs,jsx,tsx,vue}"

Automatically excludes:

• node_modules
• dist
• build
• .git

Preview changes (dry-run)

decomment "src/**/*.js" --dry-run --stats

Process multiple file types

decomment "src/**/*.{js,mjs,jsx,tsx,vue}" --stats

Preserve specific comment prefixes

decomment "src/**/*.{js,ts}" --keep eslint-,@license --stats

Configuration (decomment.config.js)

An optional configuration file can be placed at the project root.

export default {
  include: ["src/**/*.{js,mjs,jsx,tsx,vue}", "test/**/*.{js,mjs,jsx,tsx,vue}"],
  keep: ["eslint-", "@license", "@preserve"],
};

Config precedence

1. CLI file/glob arguments
2. config.include
3. Default glob (**/*.{js,mjs,jsx,tsx,vue})

Backup & Safety

For each processed file, decomment creates a single backup:

<file>.decomment.bak

• The backup is overwritten on subsequent runs
• Designed for intentional, one-shot operations
• Guarantees full reversibility

Restore & Cleanup

Restore files from backup

decomment restore

Restores files from their .decomment.bak backups.

Remove all backup files

decomment clean

Deletes all .decomment.bak files in the matched scope.

🔍 Comparison with Other Tools

| Feature / Tool | decomment | strip-comments | comment-strip | Babel / esbuild / Terser | | --------------------- | ------------------------------- | -------------- | -------------- | ------------------------ | | AST-based (safe) | ✅ Yes | ❌ Regex-based | ❌ Regex-based | ✅ Yes | | Preserves semantics | ✅ Guaranteed | ❌ Risky | ❌ Risky | ❌ Not guaranteed | | Removes only comments | ✅ Yes | ⚠️ Mostly | ⚠️ Mostly | ❌ No (build output) | | JSX / TSX support | ✅ Yes | ⚠️ Partial | ⚠️ Partial | ✅ Yes | | Vue SFC support | ✅ Script section only | ❌ No | ❌ No | ⚠️ Limited | | Preserve prefixes | ✅ Yes (--keep) | ❌ No | ❌ No | ⚠️ Limited | | Dry-run mode | ✅ Yes | ❌ No | ❌ No | ❌ No | | Statistics output | ✅ Yes | ❌ No | ❌ No | ❌ No | | Backup & rollback | ✅ Yes | ❌ No | ❌ No | ❌ No | | Glob batch processing | ✅ Yes | ⚠️ Limited | ⚠️ Limited | ⚠️ Build-specific | | Config file support | ✅ Yes | ❌ No | ❌ No | ❌ No | | CI / pre-commit ready | ✅ Designed for it | ❌ No | ❌ No | ⚠️ Not intended | | Risk of breaking code | Very Low | Medium | Medium | High | | Primary use case | Production codebase hygiene | Small scripts | Small scripts | Build & minification |

🧠 Why decomment Exists

• Regex-based tools do not understand syntax and can break code
• Build tools modify structure, formatting, and semantics
• decomment removes comments — and nothing else

If you care about safety, reviewability, and deterministic output, this tool is built for you.

🏆 When to Use decomment

• You want zero behavior changes
• You need auditable CI output
• You must preserve ESLint and license comments
• You work with modern JS / TS / Vue codebases
• You want safe and reversible operations

🚫 When NOT to Use decomment

• You just need quick text cleanup
• You already minify source code
• You do not care about accidental removals

npm Scripts Integration (Recommended)

decomment is designed to work naturally with npm scripts for safe and repeatable workflows.

{
  "scripts": {
    "decomment": "decomment",
    "decomment:check": "decomment --dry-run --stats",
    "decomment:fix": "decomment --stats",
    "decomment:restore": "decomment restore",
    "decomment:clean": "decomment clean"
  }
}

Common workflows

# Preview comment removal (no file changes)
npm run decomment:check

# Remove comments and create backups
npm run decomment:fix

# Restore all files from backups
npm run decomment:restore

# Remove all .decomment.bak files
npm run decomment:clean

🪝 Pre-commit Hook (Husky)（Optional / Advanced）

Pre-commit Hook (Husky) – Optional

You can integrate decomment into a pre-commit workflow to automatically remove comments before each commit.

⚠️ This is optional and recommended only for teams that already use Husky.

Setup

npm install -D husky
npx husky install
npx husky add .husky/pre-commit

Example .husky/pre-commit

#!/bin/sh
. "$(dirname "$0")/_/husky.sh"

echo "🧹 Running decomment..."

npx decomment "src/**/*.{js,mjs,jsx,tsx,vue}" \
  --keep eslint-,@license,@preserve \
  --stats

License

MIT License