发布Javascript库供客户端使用

Question

I have a Javascript library that I wrote for a client. This is written in typescript using webpack and "compiles" into javascript. I want to give the client access to the distribution files but not the whole source. Ideally they can install from the command line to make installing updates easy.

The library provides some javascript functions. The client would install the script in one location on their server. They could then include the javascripts in their web surveys as they need it.

+project
  +dist
     -main.js
     -vendor.js
     -index.html
     -README.md
     -LICENSE.md
  +src
     -index.js
     -index.html
     ...

My initial thoughts are to give them access to a private git repository that contains only the distribution files. So my project would be a git repository, only I would have access to this repo. I would then copy the contents of the dist directory to a release directory. The release directory would be another git repo I could supply to the client.

I'm not sure this is the best approach.

It was suggested that GitHub releases may be an option - but I don't use GitHub, I use GitLab and would like to continue to do so.

npm also doesn't seem like a good choice. It installs files into the node_modules directory and creates a package.json file. That's going to be confusing to my client and isn't "clean".

Answer 1

It sounds like a second git repository as submodule could work for you. On your side it would receive the built files, and on the clients side they could consume them.

I'd suggest making use of tags to indicate significant versions in the submodule

By using a separate repository there is no risk of leaking the original files.

Alternatively you could package the files as a zip, and upload somewhere like S3 as part of your ci process, and write a script to give the client that can automatically download the distribution files - but this seems more complex than just using a package manager like npm.