The idea of npm link
is great - link a package under development into another package that uses it, allowing you
test the changes being made to the package being linked. The problem with npm link
is that it is a notorious
PITA because of two things:
- It's just a
symlink
to the package source: meaning that it has a full-blownnode_modules
(not deduped), causing problems with local package resolution. - It's just a
symlink
to the package source: meaningrequire
resolution happens against thesymlink
s real path, which screws everything up most of the time.
So in most cases npm link
simply does not work.
This package (slink
) tries to provide a dev time mechanism that allows you to "slink" a package under development into
another package that uses it, allowing you to test the changes being made to the package under development. So, the "use case" is
basically the same as npm link
.
The difference is that it doesn't use any symlink
s and so doesn't have either of the issues listed above. It watches
the source in the slinked package (under dev) and "synchronizes" any changes as they happen. But, it does NOT touch the
contents of the node_modules
directory.
Install
npm install -g slink
Usage
slink
requires you to start by installing the package(s) under development (e.g. "A") into the package in which you will be testing
the changes to "A" (e.g. "B"). Once "A" is installed, "B" will have a properly deduped "A" in it's node_modules
dir. Now you can
slink
in "B", telling it to watch for and synchronize source changes in "A" into node_modules/A
.
e.g.
npm install
"A" in "B":
tfennelly@diego:~/projects/B $ npm install ../A
slink
"A" in "B" and make a source change to ../A/index.js
:
tfennelly@diego:~/projects/B $ slink ../AWatching
In the above case slink
sits and watches for changes in ../A
.
Note: You can also
slink
using the package name (i.e. not a relative path). This works so long as the package beingslink
d has beennpm link
d.
Note: If
../A/package.json
contains afiles
spec, that spec will be honoured i.e. only files covered by the spec will be synchronized.
Note: You can specify multiple packages to be "slinked" e.g.
slink ../X ../Y ../Z