Common-Ignore

A tool for generating .gitignore and .npmignore files with a common file for both ignores.

Installing

npm install --save-dev common-ignore

Why Common-Ignore Is Useful.

How .npmignore works.

By default npm uses .gitignore. If there is also a .npmignore file, then npm will use the .npmignore file instead of the .gitignore file.

Accidentally publishing secret files

The .npmignore file can be useful, especially for repositories with other files that the npm package doesn't need. However, you need to remember to also include things that would be in .gitignore, which usually include secrets. It can be annoying to copy and paste things from .gitignore to .npmignore, and it can be easy to forget. For example, you could add something to .gitignore, but then forgot to also add it to .npmignore.

Using

Config

There are three properties in a config object

• inputDir - The directory that contains the input files (then you can use the relative paths of individual inputs.)
• outputDir - The directory that the output files are in (usually it's just ./, for top level outputs.)
• files - The inputs and their outputs. This is an object
  • keys - strings containing the name or path of the input file.
  • values - options for the file
    • extends - an array of files which it extends. This can be an empty array. If an item in this array is not an input in the config, then it will read that file. If items in the array are also inputs in files, then they will recursively extend whatever they extend. For example, if a.txt extends b.txt, and b.txt extends c.txt, then a.txt will extend both b.txt and c.txt.
    • output - The output path or file name of the input. This is usually .gitignore or .npmignore, but you can add whatever output names you want.

Here is an example which has two inputs. git.txt and npm.txt. Both of them extend common.txt, which is another file in the commonignore folder.

{
    inputDir: "./commonignore",
    outputDir: "./",
    files: {
        "git.txt": {
            extends: ["common.txt"],
            output: ".gitignore"
        },
        "npm.txt": {
            extends: ["common.txt"],
            output: ".npmignore"
        },
        "another.txt": {
            extends: ["git.txt", "npm.txt"],
            output: "another.ignore"
        }
    }
}

Node.js Module

import commonIgnore from 'common-ignore'

The commonIgnore function takes two parameters. The first one is the options / config. The second parameter is optional, and it is the base directory. Usually the base directory is the root folder of your project. It returns a promise, which resolves undefined once done.

Example

commonIgnore(myOptions, __dirname)
    .then(() => {
        console.log("Done");
    })
    .catch(err => {
        console.log("Error");
    })