Meta NPM Packages

Managing tons of NodeJS modules/projects easily.

About Me

The Context

More and more NPM modules.

State of the Node developers

Why ?

  • Separation of concerns
  • UNIX philosophy
  • Reusable
  • Community review
  • Glory and fame

Downsides

  • discoverability issues
  • JavaScript fatigue
  • maintenance nightmare (until...)

Let's DRY

Metapak

Authoring modules easily

Why ya module?

  • 70 NPM modules to manage
  • Micro-services at work with
    a lot of similar projects
  • Nothing fitting my needs
  • Willing to share & learn from
    the community feedback
  • Feeling guilty to abandon modules
  • Maintenance headaches were
    limiting my will to innovate

A journey

on metapak internals

The `metapak` Module

  • helps to create meta packages
  • helps tranforming:
    - package.json files
    - assets
    - git hooks
  • highly customizable

package.json

  • add dependencies
    (linter, test framework, CI)
  • add utility scripts
  • manage common fields
    (author, engines supports)

Assets

  • add licenses
  • add CI files
    (Dockerfile, circle.yml ...)
  • template anything
    (READMEs, CONTRIBUTING ...)

Git hooks

No bullshit in your repos

Building your own
in 4 simple steps

Focus on creating `metapak-*` modules

Step 1: Bootstrap

Step 2:

Apply `package.json`
tranformations

Step 3

Add and transform
assets

Step 4

Add Git Hooks

Optionnal

Create variants

Finally

Add it to your NPM modules:

npm i --save-dev metapak metapak-*; npm i

Advantages

  • Don't version what you can compute
  • Apply your standards with a simple `npm i`
  • Avoid wasting your time on tasks no-one loves!
  • composable: you can add several metapackages
    to a single module.

Alternatives

Thank you!