npm-package-minimal

Example of publishing an NPM package to Github Packages via Github Actions.

This is useful for developing private packages you use internally and don't want to publish to the public NPM registry.

Features:

• Vite tooling
• Testing and code coverage via vitest
• TypeScript
• Publish as ESM
• Github Actions for testing and publishing package
• eslint and prettier for code formatting

How to clone this repo for your own NPM module

This is a template, so you can clone the repo by clicking Use this template in Github.

Then make the following changes:

• in package.json:
  • update all the @briangershon to your account name
  • replace npm-package-minimal with the name of your repo. The name field is particularly important since this is needed for publishing your module. Name should have the format @your-github-username/your-repo-name.
  • reset your version to an initial value 0.0.0. Note: You'll update this version when publishing package.
• update LICENSE file with your own name or license.
• update README.md with your own content.
• optional update .prettierrc.json or eslint.config.js with your own settings.

How to npm install this package in your own application

Since this module is being deployed to the GitHub package repository (instead of the default NPM registry), you need to tell npm how to find the package.

First create your own personal github token with repo and read:packages scopes, which you'll use as your password in the next step.

Use your own --scope value instead of @briangershon.

npm login --registry=https://npm.pkg.github.com --scope=@briangershon

In your project, install this package like so:

npm install @briangershon/npm-package-minimal

Run tests while developing this package

npm run test:watch

or without watch:

npm test

Run while developing

npm run build:watch

To release new version of this package

• for first time run, ensure your repo's GitHub Actions have the correct permissions to publish a package. Go to repo's Settings > Actions > General > Workflow Permissions and choose Read and Write Permissions.
• create a PR for your branch
• merge your PR to main
• on your local machine, run git pull to bring down latest main changes
• run npm version patch -s -m "my release" to bump the version number (patch can be replaced with minor or major versions), tag it, and push it to GitHub
• publish package on GitHub package registry by creating a Release on github.com to trigger publish action