npm init -- --app should create an "install" hook

[dherman]

There's no "install" hook for --app projects created by the new create-neon.

[kjvalencik]

Should it be prepare and exist for both apps and libraries?

[dherman]

Should it be prepare and exist for both apps and libraries?

Libraries aren't built on demand, they're built remotely on the CI/CD server across the full platform matrix and the binaries are published separately. The library itself doesn't require any local build process.

For apps, I think you're right that "prepare" is the right call.

[dherman]

I added this to #1041.

[kjvalencik]

The prepare hook only runs before a publish. That's not something we want to take advantage of for libs?

[dherman]

The prepare hook runs both before publish and install. You might be thinking of prepublishOnly, which only runs before publish.

For libs, we can't make use of a publish hook because it's synchronous, and libs need to fork off a bunch of remote prebuilds running on CI/CD servers. So publishing is actually done via CI/CD instead of locally. But if you can think of a way to do this with an npm publish workflow, I'm open to it!

[kjvalencik]

Is there some other hook we can use that always gets run when you locally pull for both types?

[dherman]

Can you say more? I don't quite know what you mean by locally pull.

[dherman]

Followup: based on discussion in #1041, we agreed that this isn't a great idea after all. Rationale:

• There's no npm workflow for "please run this script the first time I set up node_modules".
• It's not great to force a rebuild every time you update a dependency.
• We don't really know how apps will set up their builds, so it's best not to try to guess, and just leave it to them.
• Consistency between both app and lib: if you want to run a local build, do npm run build.