Specify manifest file explicitly

[sebamarynissen]

Hi,

I'm having the following problem. I'm developing a module for node.js which of course has it's proper package.json file with a "main" field, which is in my case

{
  "main": "lib/index.js"
}

However, for some testing reasons, I want to run nw.js as well in this folder. The problem though is that I cannot simply change the "main" field to for example

{
  "main": "nw/index.html"
}

as this would break all my .js files which do something like

var mylib = require('..');

where ".." resolves to the main directory of my module.
I tried to solve this by creating a separate package.json file for nw.js and put it in a sub-folder of my module and subsequently running nw from that sub-folder. This doesn't solve the issue though because as such I'm unable to refer any files in the parent directory, which is what I need:

<!-- ".." won't work when nw is run from within the subfolder. -->
<script type="text/javascript" src="../lib/index.js"></script>

I tried searching for a way to specify the manifest file explicitly so that nw.js reads in the required data from there, and not from the default package.json. This would allow me to create a new manifest file, called for example package-nw.json that would live happily next to the node module's package.json file, and then launch nw.js from the main directory as (something like)

nw . --manifest=package-nw.json

I found that a command line --nwapp already exists, but that doesn't seem to allow me to specify my manifest file, only the app directory. I need to specify my manifest file instead.

I know that I could solve this by creating a dedicated package.json file in a build process, but I just want to play around with nw.js during development of my node module. I don't need it for production. Therefore, in my opinion, a feature to specify the manifest file explicitly would be useful.

I'm running nw.js 0.23.4 on Windows 7, but this isn't going to matter too much I guess as the problem is pretty general.

[nickverlinden]

I had exactly the same issue yesterday, but I worked around this by doing the reverse you did.
I created a subfolder containing all node.js code called "bin", then in that bin folder is a package.json for node.js. The node_modules folder remains in the root. Then in the project root folder there is an index.html, package.json (contain all node.js info, but the main tag is for nw.js) and a run.js file. This run.js file just has a line "require("bin/index.js"). This allows you to start the app from node using the following command: node ./run.js. If you then set the execute flag for the run.js file and add a shell shim on the first line of run.js (), then you can even do this on the command: "./run.js". Not the ideal world scenario, but works for me.

[aprilandjan]

Need this too

[BrettFraley]

2024: Found this issue today. I'm working around it. Is there a flag that for this that I haven't found?
eg: nw ./src/index.html --manifest="path-to-package.json"