Meteor Private Smart Package Helper

This CLI tool for Meteor/Meteorite helps when working with a set of private smart-packages that you wish to deploy to a cloud service (such as Heroku) but you do not want to open-source the packages and host them on Atmosphere.

It works by allowing you to reference your local packages as symbolic links during development. Then when it comes time to deploy, copy all of your private packages locally to the project, getting you ready to push the complete set of files to Heroku.

Install

npm install -g meteor-private-package

This will give you access to the p-ref command from the terminal.

Usage

Start by creating adding a private element to your Meteorite's smart.json. This provides the file references to your local smart packages that are private:

{
  "meteor": {
    "git": "https://github.com/meteor/meteor.git",
    "branch": "master"
  },
  "packages": { },
  "private": {
    "base": "../../packages",
    "packages": {
      "core-users": "core-users"
    }
  }
}

The base attribute is optional. You can either specify the full working path in each private package, or you can set a common path to the directory containing all your packages.

To switch Meteorite to use these reference as symbolic links:

$ p-ref link

This will update the smart.json file. Then when it comes time to deploy, switch to a new branch and copy in the packages (using p-ref copy), then push to your favorite cloud service:

$ git checkout -b 'deploy'
$ p-ref copy

$ git add .
$ git commit -m 'Ready to deploy!'
$ git push heroku deploy:master

This will make a copy of the packages to a hidden folder (.packages.copy) and update the smart.json file with references these local copies, not the source location of your packages.

After deploying, switch back to your development branch, and your back in business.

Commands

Set up the Meteorite smart.json file with file references declared within your private/packages element (see above):

$ p-ref link

Copy referenced packages in locally to your project (see the .packages.copy folder):

$ p-ref copy

Removes copied references, (deleting the .packages.copy folder):

$ p-ref reset