Installing a Private Github Dependency Via Npm

January 16, 2020
2 min read

Prepare your library to be used as a package

  1. Make sure that your library is configured at the root of your repository.
    • Has a package.json with dependencies.
  2. Configure the package.json at the root of the project to build the library upon installation using a prepare script in the scripts tags
    • “prepare”: “npm run build”
    • This will generate a dist folder when upon library installation.
  3. Make sure that you have a .npmignore file See reference.
    • This can just be an empty file.
    • This will prevent npm from ignoring the dist directory upon installation.

Install your library as a dependency via npm with HTTPS

  1. Clone the repository that you would like to use your library within
  2. Create a Private Access Token for yourself
    • Generate the Access token for HTTPS: Settings > Developer Settings > Personal Access Tokens.
    • When creating your token, make sure that the repo permission checkbox is selected.
  3. Reference your library in your parent project
    • Find the package.json in your parent project
    • Add a link to your github project in format listed below
    • Make sure that the name in your library’s package.json matches the name of the library that you are importing. See reference. This is important since you are using git links
  4. [Optional] Configure a company user who has read only access to your private library repository.
    • Following Step #2, generate a read-only token for this user. This an be used in your project’s git dependency link.
    • Since this is a read-only access token which is committed to a private repository, there is minimal security risk.
    • This can also be used on the Jenkins server with no configuration

Npm Github Link Example

{
  "dependencies": {
    "[package_name]": "git+https://[personal_token]:x-oauth-basic@github.com/[user]/[project].git#[commit-ish]"
  }
}

The commit-ish can be:

  • Commit number
  • Branch name

References