Included test/ javascript-files

[nknapp]

Commit e040eff introduced a pattern in .npmignore which causes test/*.js files to be included in the npm-release of less.js. The comment in .npmignore is

re-include test files as they can be useful for plugins that do testing.

After doing npm install less, the downloaded files (including dependencies) occupy 23 MB.
After removing all optional dependencies, 11 MB are occupied.
After removing the test/ directory, there are 2.5 MB left. Since many project on npm have a dependency on less (over 700) it may worth considering to exclude those files again.

However, the comment suggests that there are concrete cases (plugins) that led to including the test-files in the npm-release. It would be interesting to know which ones that are, or if there are other ways to get a smaller version of less that can be downloaded from npm.

[rjgotten]

I was wondering about this as well. What use would plugins actually get out of the unit tests?

If we are refering to plugin authors using the unit tests as part of a test harness for their own plugins, well ...

The main "less" package can simply list a "less-tests" package with the tests in devDependencies, right?

If a plugin author then needs the tests they can change into the installed "less" package folder and simply do npm install --dev there, which should add the devDependencies including the unit tests from the "less-tests" package.

[nknapp]

Do any of the authors or collaborators have an oppinion on this?

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.