package.json of our samples are polluted by our maintenance tools

[steren]

Take a look at this example: https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/nodejs-docs-samples/blob/master/appengine/hello-world/standard/package.json

cloud-repo-tools, devDependencies and most of the scripts do not serve the purpose of giving example code to our users, instead, they are data used by our maintenance tools.

Could they be in a different file that does not interfere with package.json ?

[steren]

Because they contain more that what is actually needed and JSON does not support comments, the package.json cannot be embedded in our documentation without confusing users.

[fhinkel]

I think we're getting rid of repo-tools, cc @JustinBeckwith . That would get rid of one dev-dependency.

I don't think there's a good solution to making samples short - but also self contained and on the CI 😞

[JustinBeckwith]

So yeah, repo-tools is on its way out. @fhinkel is it doing anything important for these samples?

As far as others are concerned - I disagree! Things like mocha or semistandard are just part of a normal development process. I don't think having them in the devDependencies is hurting anything, and if anything it pushes developers towards good software development process.

[fhinkel]

A lot of samples rely on this test setup:

"cloud-repo-tools": {
    "test": {
      "app": {
        "msg": "Hello, world!"
      }
    },
    "requiresKeyFile": true,
    "requiresProjectId": true
  }

If we remove the repo-tools dependency, we'd need to write those tests ourselves - which I would prefer because no user will be familiar with the repo-tools magic.

[fhinkel]

Closing this, I think our package.jsons are fairly standard and not confusing to Node devs.