Meta NPM Packages

Managing tons of NodeJS modules/projects easily.

About Me

• Nicolas Froidure, JavaScript developer
  @7Digital
• Blogging at InsertAfter
• Tweeting as @nfroidure

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...)

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

• create a `metapak-*` module
• install `npm i --save-dev metapak`

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