fenestrate

Flatten the dependency graph for your NPM package so that it's less likely to bump up against the 260-char path limit on Windows. Does not assign blame or bloviate about whose responsibility this whole mess is.

The package needs to be fully installed before fenestrate configuration creation will work. Run npm install before fenestrate if you haven't already installed the module in place. fenestrate rewrite on the other hand does not require installation first.

Installation:

npm install -g fenestrate

Usage:

C:\some\long\path> fenestrate make .\module

(Of course it works on *nix systems as well.)

Common Commands:

make updates the package.json file in the current directory to contain a __fenestrate configuration that can be used to rewrite the node_modules directory later, using fenestrate rewrite-full.

rewrite rewrites the node_modules directory to use the flattest possible dependency graph for the dependencies. requires make first.

rewrite-prod does what rewrite does, but skips devDependencies.

rewrite-full swaps out the fenestrated package.json before performing a rewrite, resulting in the flattest possible dependency graph. it may lead to instability if your dependencies are doing anything strange, but it is the most aggressive algorithm.

rewrite-prod-full does what rewrite-full does, but skips devDependencies.

restore defenestrates! It undoes the changes written to your node_modules by fenestrate rewrite.

remove removes the __fenestrate configuration from package.json.

dry-run describes the changes that would be made to package.json, but won't make them.

help prints this help text.

packaging

If you're making an npm package and you know the graph is dangerously deep for windows (i'm looking at you, bower) you should run fenestrate make on your package and commit the change.

The fenestrate make command creates a flatter dependency graph and saves it in a special __fenestrate attribute in your package.json file. By itself, it doesn't flatten the dep graph, but indicates to the Windows consumer that the package can be safely flattened with fenestrate rewrite, and describes the flatter dependencies. The idea is for Windows servers to add a post-install hook script to the node_modules folder in their installation root (and this setup is covered in the next section).

So by successfully running fenestrate make on your package before you publish it, you're letting Windows consumers know that your package is optimized for Windows, even if you can't test on Windows yourself.

windows server setup

You can configure a Windows server to run fenestrate rewrite on every npm package that installs inside a certain directory tree. (Note that fenestrate rewrite will silently fail with a successful exit code if it doesn't find a __fenestrate configuration, so it can be safely run on non-fenestrated packages as well.)

Let's say that all of your npm packages on a given server will be descendents of the D:\web\ folder. Add the following file, creating directories if they don't already exist:

D:\web\node_modules\.hooks\install.cmd

And put in that file:

fenestrate rewrite .

Add another, blank file, with the same name without the three-letter extension. (This is a Node quirk on Windows, to force it to acknowledge an install hook script.)

D:\web\node_modules\.hooks\install

Finally, install fenestrate globally:

npm install -g fenestrate

And now, all packages will be fenestrate rewritten as they come in. You're welcome.

Licensed GPLv3.