npm publish a package with only the children of dist folder

Question

My package is structured as follows:

mypackage
   |--- src
   |     |--- component1
   |     `--- component2
   `--- dist
         |--- component1
         `--- component2

When I publish it to npm, I would like it to look like the following, without the dist directory:

mypackage
   |--- component1
   `--- component2

The idea is that when I import from this package, the imports should look file this:

import component1 from 'mypackage/component1'

an not this (notice the extra dist):

import component1 from 'mypackage/dist/component1'

How to achieve this? I currently have a files section in my package.json which publishes with the extra dist and I don't want that:

"files": [
  "dist/"
]

score 21 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 26 '18 at 10:59

21

Based on the answer from How to publish contents only of a specific folder? this may be of use:

npm run build
cp package.json ./dist
# or, if you need to have package.json "main" entry different,
# e.g. for being able to use `npm link`, you need to replace "main" 
value:
# sed 's#"main": "./dist/index.js"#"main": "./index.js"#' package.json > ./dist/package.json
cd ./dist
npm publish

So just basically copy your package.json into the dist/ folder and then run npm publish from within the dist/ folder

answered Jan 26 '18 at 10:59

Jordan Whitfield

1,413
15
17

1

Thank you! This should be documented on npm's docs – Omar Dulaimi Mar 25 '21 at 20:12
This did not work for me, though programmatically changing the outDir entry in my `tsconfig.json` from `./dist/` to `./` did the trick! – Thijmen Nov 02 '22 at 08:55

npm publish a package with only the children of dist folder

1 Answers1