npm-self-link

CLI tool to bootstrap a node package, allowing it to depend on itself.

Bootstrapping is the concept of building something using the thing itself as a part of the process. npm packages can't literally add dependencies on themselves, but npm-self-link makes use of npm link to allow them to do so.

installation

# using yarn 
yarn add --dev npm-self-link
 
# using npm 
npm install --save-dev npm-self-link

usage

Simply run the command in your terminal:

npm-self-link

Note: you must run the command again after each npm install, which does not preserve package links.

or add it to an npm script in your package.json:

{
  "scripts": {
    "pretest": "npm-self-link",
    "test": "node tests.js"
  }
}

Generally you should run npm-self-link prior to any process where your package will import (or require) itself.

see also

• param.macro – a babel macro that uses npm-self-link