My problem is that when I try to install a package of mine with the version set to a certain git branch my build is breaking because the repository doesn't house the dist folder which my npm package does.
Here is how I want to install the package.
@me/myPkg": "github:me/myPkg#myBranch
So should my repository include the dist folder or what's the best practice in this case? I don't want to publish my dist package onto github because then I would have weird merge conflicts because the dist folder is containg all of my type declaration and minified javascript files, but maybe this the preferred way?
Another thought I had was to have a postinstall script in my package.json which built the source files but then I would have to have the devDependencies installed as well and npm install doesn't install them for dependencies.
How are you publishing your package? For instance, I have a GitHub Actions setup on my repositories that, when commits are made to master, will automatically perform several steps
Run an npm install Setup Git Credential variables (for later
process)
Run npm test (and fail whole process if tests fail)
Run
npm run release (I use standard-version for auto version
incrementing and Changelog creation, and do this prior to build so
the version can be reflected in the built code)
Run npm run build
Run npm run publish to push to npm
Commit my version update as a tag to Git
My GitHub Action does all of this in a temp container it spins up for the build process. Once it is done, the whole container is tossed. I use an .npmignore file to tell publish what I don't want in the final package (note files, build tools, etc).