remove lockfile, add .npmignore

[mattwelke]

Some cleanup:

• Lock files should not be used for libraries (projects that are dependencies of other projects). See https://dev.to/gajus/stop-using-package-lock-json-or-yarn-lock-3ddi for more info. NPM has been ignoring this file for our publishes anyways. Not having the lockfile prevents contributors from accidentally using versions of the library dependencies that are different from the versions that would be used by projects that use this library as a dependency.
• Add .npmignore file so we can start to omit automation tooling (like the .github directory we now have). People like clean NPM packages downloaded into their projects.

[Yash-Singh1]

Suggested change

	.github
	.github/

Since .github is always a directory, we can add a slash after it.

[mattwelke]

Agree. I tend to use .github because it works as a glob pattern, but explicit is probably better than implicit. Changed.

[Yash-Singh1]

I would also suggest having a .npmrc file at the root of the repository with the following:

package-lock=false

This would disable package-lock.json from installing in the first place when npm install is run.

[Yash-Singh1]

Since we are creating a .npmignore here it would be best to ignore other items such as:

test/
misc/
.travis.yml
Makefile

[mattwelke]

True. I didn't realize until double checking the docs on .npmignore that NPM uses .gitignore if you have no .npmignore. So we need to add this stuff back in so that we continue to get the behavior we've had so far. Changed.

[mattwelke]

@Yash-Singh1 Cool, I didn't know that was a feature of .npmrc. I agree that's desirable behavior for a library. But I can't find package-lock=false referenced in their docs on the file (https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v7/configuring-npm/npmrc). Can you double check whether that's the right setting, and preferably link a doc showing how to use it?

[Yash-Singh1]

That link includes where to keep an .npmrc and what it is. Here is the documentation for how to configure with it: https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v7/using-npm/config#package-lock.