Avoid syncing
node_modulesto iCloud
npm i -g nosync-icloud
# or
yarn global add nosync-icloud
Many Web Developers are using Mac, iCloud is really convenience, especially when you have multiple Apple devices. But, there will be a huge node_modules in almost every front-end project. If you want to synchronize your code with iCloud. You'll find out that what a horrible experience it is when iCloud automatically synchronizes node_modules —— large amount of folders, nested structure, huge size, etc., and node_modules doesn't need to be synchronized. You can restore your project dependencies just with a package.json and lock file. Due to this trouble, we have to give up the idea of using iCloud to back up our code.
Of course, you can create a node_modules.nosync folder, and make an alias named node_modules for it. iCloud won't synchronize a file or folder which is end of .nosync, and, this don't have any side effect to your project, you can still use npm install.
mv node_modules node_modules.nosync && ln -s node_modules.nosync node_modulesor an extended version with file type checks
[[ ! -L "node_modules" && -d "node_modules" ]] && mv node_modules node_modules.nosync && ln -s node_modules.nosync node_modules || echo "Failed: not-candidate-dir or already-done" >&2
But entering such a series of commands is somewhat troublesome. So, when you search for the keywords iCloud, node_modules in Google, you will find a lot of people complaining about that, i am one of them, and gave feedback to Apple, but Apple doesn't seems care about this problem.
In fact, what the above line of command does can be achieved through Node.js. So I wrote this CLI tool —— nosync-icloud 👏👏👏🎉🎉🎉
npm i -g nosync-icloud
# or
yarn global add nosync-icloudyou'll get nosync and ns （for short）global command after installation.
Open your project in the terminal and execute nosync. The nosync command will check the node_modules of the current project. If you have installed node_modules, then it will rename node_modules to node_modules.nosync and create an alias named node_modules. If you have not installed it before, it will provide three optional installation methods —— npm, yarn, cnpm, of course you can also choose to install it later. After the installation is complete, it will also prompt you whether to add node_modules.nosync to .gitignore.
nosync-icloud can not only avoid node_modules to sync with iCloud, but also any folder that you don't want to synchronize with iCloud by using ns -f foo to specify it.
| Options | Abbreviation | Description |
|---|---|---|
| --version | -v | output the version number |
| --help | -h | output usage information |
| --folder | -f | specify the folder you don't want to sync. default: node_modules e.g. ns -f foo. |
| --skip-git | -s | skip the step of adding the 'nosync folder' to .gitignore |
node_modules is a conventional folder, so in some webpack configurations, the path of node_modules is hard-coded, please pay attention to modify it. If you think this gadget is not bad, you might as well share it with others. I am not a native English speaker, if you found any typo or grammatical errors, feel free to make a PR.