Tiny npm Package Starter Kit

Helps quickly start coding tiny/small npm packages using the latest ES syntax and features while publishing ES5 code for maximum compatibility.

Standard settings are provided for:

• Convenience npm scripts
• ESLint
• Babel
• Mocha/Chai
• istanbul/nyc

Getting started

First of all, clone the repo:

$ git clone https://github.com/gabmontes/tiny-package-starter.git <my-package-name>
$ cd <my-package-name>

Then, do some cleanup and init the new package's repo:

$ rm -rf .git    # Cleans up git and unlinks from the upstream repo
$ git init       # Initializes git again
$ npm init       # Initializes npm
$ npm install    # Installs base packages

After the package's code is ready, just set the proper version and publish!

$ npm version <major|minor|patch>    # updates package.json and applies tag
$ npm publish                        # lints, builds and publishes
$ git push --follow-tags             # don't forget to push the code and tags!

Watch out!

The files property in package.json specifies which files/folders will be published to the npm registry. As per initial settings, only the dist, lib and bin folders will be published to keep the installed package as clean and small as possible.

Folder's structure

.
├── bin        # ES5 command line scripts
├── cli        # Source command line scripts
├── dist       # ES5 package distribution files
├── lib        # Source package files
└── test       # Tests folder

Provided settings

Convenience npm scripts

There are scripts to lint, test the code, run coverage tests, build and do it all together when executing npm publish!

ESLint

Recommended configurations is provided for the package code. In addition, the test folder enables the mocha environment variables and, for convenience, the bin folder prevents errors/warnings for using console.log() statements.

Most customizations like adding configs, plugins and rules, should be done in the root's .eslintrc.json file so those are inherited to the whole package.

Babel

Babel is preset with the latest-minimal preset for development and testing, which loads only the minimum set of transforms based on the current execution environment (installed node's supported features).

For building, it uses the latest preset instead, which enables all the standard transforms needed to convert the code to ES5 and ensuring maximum compatibility of the published npm package.

Experimental (stage-x) presets are not included by default.

Polyfills

While latest ES syntax features are transparently managed by the latest/latest-minimal presets, new global objects and object's functions shall be polyfilled.

Long story short, in code that will be distributed as a package, prefer using babel-plugin-transform-runtime (why?) unless the codes uses some of the new object's instance functions as [1,2].includes(1). In that case, polyfill just what is needed through core-js or polyfill all the things using babel-polyfill. This last option is also valid and convenient for command-line scripts, as that code is not meant to be embedded/required.

Finally, if polyfilling is not for you, just specify what is the minimum version of Node.JS needed to run your package by setting the engines.node property in the package.json:

{
  "engines": { "node": ">=4.0.0" }
}

Mocha, Chai and istanbul/nyc

Enjoy having it all ready to run the tests with Mocha, make them fail with Chai and analyze coverage with istanbul/nyc!

License

WTFPL