emusym

emusym: Emulate symlinks

This tool emulates symlinks by watching source packages for changes, copying changed distribution files (as seen in npm pack) into the destination package's node_modules.

When doing local development on dependencies, npm link (or yarn link) is a very convenient workflow tool. Unfortunately in some cases build tools do not support symlinks in node_modules, most (in)famously React Native's Metro bundler.

What this tool does not do is create the changes to sync, that is left up to each package to produce via the most suitable mechanism. Most build tools offer something like a --watch flag that will incrementally build new output.

• Usage
• Commands

Usage

## Install the tool as a dev dependency
$ yarn add -D emusym   # Or `npm install --save-dev emusym` if using npm.

## Link a source package (`other-package`) to the current package.
$ yarn emusym link ../my/other-package
✔  success      📦 ../my/other-package → other-package
✔  success      🔗 other-package → .

## Start watching and syncing changes…
$ yarn emusym start
[other-package] › ℹ  info         ☔️  Preserving existing module
[other-package] › ℹ  info         Linking ../my/other-package → .
[other-package] › ▲  add:file     package.json
[other-package] › ▲  add:dir      src
[other-package] › ▲  add:file     src/index.js
[other-package] › ●  change:file  src/index.js
[other-package] › ▲  add:file     src/new.js
[other-package] › ●  change:file  src/new.js
[other-package] › ▼  del:file     src/new.js

Commands

• emusym help [COMMAND]
• emusym link [PATH...]
• emusym start

emusym help [COMMAND]

display help for emusym

USAGE
  $ emusym help [COMMAND]

ARGUMENTS
  COMMAND  command to show help for

OPTIONS
  --all  see all commands in CLI

See code: @oclif/plugin-help

emusym link [PATH...]

Link a local package by path.

USAGE
  $ emusym link [PATH...]

OPTIONS
  --force        Allow overwriting existing source links.
  --scope=scope  Add an npm scope to the destination package name.

DESCRIPTION
  Multiple paths can be provided to link several packages in a single command.

EXAMPLES
  $ emusym link /somewhere/else/my_thing
  $ emusym link /somewhere/else/my_*

See code: src/commands/link.ts

emusym start

Start watching and syncing linked packages.

USAGE
  $ emusym start

DESCRIPTION
  Packages previously linked with the 'link' command will be watched and changes
  synced back to ./node_modules. Only pack files (npm pack) from the source
  packages will be synced, meaning each package is responsible for producing its
  own changes to be synced.

See code: src/commands/start.ts