publish-util

Clean up package.json for publishing.

Your package.json:

{
  "name": "...",
  "version": "...",
  "description": "...",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "...",
    "coverage": "...",
    "build": "...",
    "prepack": "npm run build && publish-util-prepack",
    "postpack": "publish-util-postpack"
  },
  "publishUtil": {
    "remove": ["devDependencies", { "scripts": ["test", "coverage", "build"] }],
    "keep": ["options"]
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "react": "^17.0.0",
    "react-dom": "^17.0.0"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "tap": "^15.0.0",
    "publish-util": "^1.0.0"
  },
  "nyc": {
    "reporter": ["lcov", "text", "text-summary"]
  },
  "options": {}
}
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Your package.json published:

{
  "name": "...",
  "version": "...",
  "description": "...",
  "scripts": {
    "postpack": "publish-util-postpack"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "react": "^17.0.0",
    "react-dom": "^17.0.0"
  },
  "options": {}
}
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devDependencies is gone here only because publishUtil.remove asks for it - by default it's kept.

Usage

Just install this to your module:

npm install --save-dev publish-util

It will automatically add prepack and postpack scripts to your package.json for you.

Out of the box it will clean up non-standard fields plus workspaces from your package.json. The dependency fields, including devDependencies, are kept because npmjs.com uses them to show what your package depends on. To remove devDependencies, see details below

Publishing

This module offers a custom publishing script to fix some behaviors of npm publish.

The problem is that before any thing can process package.json, npm publish will load and upload it to the registry as packument (meta for the package).

If you want the copy of package.json after this module processed it to be the packument meta, then use the do-publish command:

npx do-publish

The script use whatever version of npm you have to do the actual work. It takes all CLI arguments that npm publish accepts and will pass them through.

publishUtil configs:

You can configure some behaviors with publishUtil in your package.json.

• publishUtil is removed automatically.

• rename details. The rename config is an object map, with key being the field to rename, and its value being the target name.

For example:

{
  "publishUtil": {
    "rename": {
      "scripts.foo": "scripts.renamedFoo"
    }
  }
}
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• scripts.prepublishOnly is removed automatically if it's just "publish-util-prepublishonly". Add it to publishUtil.keep to keep it:

{
  "publishUtil": {
    "keep": [{ "scripts": ["prepublishOnly"] }]
  }
}
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• scripts.prepack is removed automatically if it runs publish-util-prepack, alone or chained like "npm run build && publish-util-prepack".

• publish-util-prepublishonly is the legacy hook from when pruning ran in prepublishOnly. It skips when scripts.prepack already runs publish-util-prepack, so npm publish doesn't prune twice.

• Can't remove scripts.postpack because npm needs that to restore package.json.

• Can't use prepack because npm publish uploads meta data before that so if you want to publish with different dependencies it will break.

remove and keep formats

The config remove and keep can be:

• Array of strings that are either keys in the object or a regular expression to match keys in the object.
• To specify a regular expression, use the format "/<regexp>/<flags>"
• To reach into a nesting object, use an object of keys and array of keys/regex.

For example, to reach pkg.key1.key2, and pkg.key1.xyz*:

[
  {
    "key1": ["key2", "/xyz.*/"]
  }
]
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Removing Non-standard Fields

These top level fields are considered standard fields:

• all top level fields defined at npm package.json, except workspaces
• And these fields: module

Any extra top level fields not in the standard fields are automatically removed.

• To skip this automatic removal, set publishUtil.removeExtraKeys to false.
• You can also add fields to publishUtil.keep to avoid them being removed.

devDependencies is a standard field so it's kept. To drop it from your published package.json, list it in publishUtil.remove:

{
  "publishUtil": {
    "remove": ["devDependencies"]
  }
}
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Auto postpack Insert

If you don't have a scripts.postpack, then it's automatically added with "publish-util-postpack" to ensure your package.json is restored after packing.

• Set publishUtil.autoPostPack to false to skip this.

Overlapping and Killed Packs

Packs of the same package share one backup of package.json in the OS temp dir. Only the last pack to finish restores it. Each pack is recorded with the pid of the process running it, such as npm, so a killed pack is not waited on. The next prepack or postpack restores what it left pruned. Where the process table can't be read (no ps, as on Windows), a killed pack is still counted as active.

Dry Run and Verify

To verify package.json content.

1. Run npm run prepack
2. Inspect package.json to ensure everything is in order
3. Run npm run postpack to restore package.json
4. Inspect package.json again

Using npm pack

1. Run npm pack
2. Inspect package.json to ensure it's not modified
3. Look for the .tgz file and extract it
4. Inspect package/package.json to ensure it's as expected.

API reference

See the full API reference for every bin, config setting, function, and type.