A simple JavaScript module that demonstrates how to write a JavaScript library that can be published in various formats (AMD, UMD, CommonJS, ES6 modules, globals) and to various repositories (npm, Bower, jspm).
All this module does is export a function that prints out "hello javascript!"
.
npm run build
or yarn build
will build the Node-ready and browser-ready versions, which are written to the dist-node
and dist
directories.
First, run npm run build
, then git commit
the built files. (Yes, we're checking the built files into Git for the benefit of Github and Bower.)
Then do npm version patch|minor|major
to create the npm version as well as the Git tag. Then git push origin master --tags
, run npm publish
, and you're good to go!
For Bower, you will also need to register your module using the steps described here.
Module authors: copy-paste these instructions when you publish. This module is not actually published anywhere.
You can install this module in a variety of ways:
On the command line, run:
npm install hello-javascript
Or for yarn:
yarn add hello-javascript
Then you can build with Browserify/Webpack using require('hello-javascript')
, or you can include it directly as a <script>
tag via the dist/hello-javascript.js
file. For Rollup users, it uses a "jsnext:main"
field, so you can directly include the ES6 source.
Download either the unminified hello-javascript.js
file or the minified hello-javascript.min.js
file from the Github releases page.
bower install hello-javascript
Then use the dist/hello-javascript.js
as a <script>
tag inside your HTML page.
jspm install hello-javascript
Then you can use dist/hello-javascript.js
.
Writing JavaScript libraries has become complicated. I'm hoping this repository can serve as a Rosetta Stone so that newbie JavaScript authors have an idea of how to build their code for distribution in various channels.
Open a pull request! I'm sure there is some exotic publishing mechanism that I forgot about. :)