CODEWITHSUNDEEP
reactjsnpmdependenciesnpm-install
Bhavik Singh
Bhavik Singh

Reputation: 145

Create NPM Package with dependencies just for examples

I'm working on an NPM package right now.

The main code for the package (repo/src/maincode.js) has a few dev dependencies and a few dependencies needed to run it. When the user installs the npm package (through npm i) these dependencies will need be installed.

Now, that being said, I also want to create a react project that showcases this npm package, and have it live in the same repo, in an examples directory (repo/examples/react/app.js). This react app may have its own dependencies and dev dependencies, but I really don't want all of these to be forced onto the user when they're installing my npm package just to use in their projects.

How might I go about solving this problem? Is there a way to create a set of dependencies that are only installed if you are running a particular script, or running example code ?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 596

Answers (1)

Trott
Trott

Reputation: 70075

You can give the examples directory its own package.json file and instruct folks who want to run the examples to cd into the examples directory and run npm i there. Any code in the examples directory that imports a module will look in its own node_modules before checking the node_modules in the parent directory.

The MarkoJS examples repository takes this approach and even makes it more granular. Instead of having a single package.json for the examples directory, there is a package.json for each separate example.

If you want, you can create a helper script in the main package.json for the user so they can do something like npm run build-examples and it will do the npm install for them as part of the process.

Upvotes: 2

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