aeppic Packaging Tool

Tool to package a node package including its production dependencies as a binary.

Usage

Run the pack command in the package root (where pnpm-lock.yaml or package-lock reside)

npx @aeppic/pack

or install it globally

npm i -g @aeppic/pack
aeppic-pack

Help for options is available via --help and use -v to see what Docker is doing during the build.

Requirements

Local Docker is required and it needs to support DOCKER_BUILDKIT=1 to passthrough SSH and NPM credentials into the Docker container. Docker version 20.10.11, build dea9396 was used during development.

Two Dockerfiles are included. One for pnpm (Default) and one using npm, but that can be overwritten from the command line. By default an ubuntu:16.04 image is used as a builder image (FROM ubuntu:16.04 as builder)

Way it works

1. Gather all production files via npm pack using its JSON output
2. Create a Docker image copy the pnpm/npm lock and run a production level as part of the build
3. Copy the resulting node_modules folder from inside the container back into the host
4. Create a new tgz containing the files from step 1 and the node_modules from step 2/3

Important: Make sure the package.json files field includes all files required for runtime

Publishing

Publish this package with --access=public. For some reason npm doesn't use the public: true marker in the package.json and an explicit option is needed for publishing to a scope.