Use npm script to build and pack extension

[stefanbuck]

Based on the discussion with @josephfrazier on #101 this PR use npm script instead of gulp for building and packing the extension. Except npm run *-pack it works quite well. I'm just worried about the complexity in the package.json file. I'm undecided which version I prefer more.

@josephfrazier regarding the issue with npm run *-pack. When I run the script in the console it works, but the same script execute via npm script returns

zip error: Nothing to do! (out/chrome-octolinker-4.1.0.zip)

Any ideas?

[josephfrazier]

Hmm, when I run npm run chrome-pack, it fails with this message:

npm ERR! Tell the author that this fails on your system:
npm ERR!     npm run chrome-dist && mkdir -p out && zip --recurse-paths out/chrome-octolinker-$npm_package_version.zip dist/ --exclude dist/ \* out/\* node_modules/\*

But when I run the suggested command above, it also fails with:

zip error: Nothing to do! (out/chrome-octolinker-.zip)

(Note that $npm_package_version is empty, because we're not running in the context of an npm script.)

It looks like the chrome-pack command was modeled after pack-repo, but since it's only including the files in dist/, there's no need to --exclude anything. In particular, dist/ is being excluded, which explains why zip says there's "Nothing to do!". Maybe chrome-pack should be this instead?

npm run chrome-dist && mkdir -p out && zip --recurse-paths out/chrome-octolinker-$npm_package_version.zip dist/

EDIT: likewise for firefox-pack, of course

[stefanbuck]

@josephfrazier please have a look again. TA

[josephfrazier]

Ah, that looks much better! Nice find on the zip -j flag to avoid having dist/ go into the zipped paths; I wasn't aware of that.

I do have one nitpick, though: My development process involves loading the unpacked Chrome extension directly from ./chrome, but with these changes, npm run chrome-build doesn't actually create ./chrome/manifest.json, so the extension fails to load. I started thinking about how to fix this, and I realized that we could do away with the dist/ directory entirely. Does that sound ok to you? Here's a commit for it: josephfrazier@b5d5300

[stefanbuck]

My idea was to get rid of the chrome/ and firefox/ directory and use dist/ instead for development. Maybe it's just a naming issue. What about build? The only disadvantages I can think of is that pair development in Firefox and Chrome is not possible anymore, which shouldn't be a big issue. Btw npm run chrome-build produces a manifest.json file, under dist/ and not as you may expected under chrome/.

[josephfrazier]

Oh, I see now. I was under the impression that the chrome and firefox directories were still used somewhere in the build process, but I now see that I was mistaken. I think it's cleaner to have a single output directory anyway, especially if we were to add support for other browsers like Safari. Merging :)

[stefanbuck]

What about the naming? Should we call it build instead of dist?

[josephfrazier]

I don't really have a preference there, other than a very slight preference to leave it as dist, so I don't have to change the path that Chrome loads the unpacked extension from :P