[Feature] Allow custom publish subdirectory

EDIT: I overlooked package/[name]/scripts/prepublish.js, so that’s awesome. It would however be a bit difficult to customize the directory in which npm publish is run just with a prepublish script. I’ll adjust this issue to recommend adding a way to customize that publish directory, since it’s hard-coded in publishTaggedInDir.

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It would be awesome to be able to customize the publish behavior (like the publish directory) - for my use case, I build the packages like packages/abc/src into a directory called packages/abc/dist, then copy the package.json into dist and publish from there (to have a flat module structure). I’ve gotten it working for now by overriding the exports of npmUtils, but in the future it would be awesome to be able to customize this step:

#!/usr/bin/env node

// Wrapper script that patches lerna with our custom publish path

import child from 'child_process';
import logger from 'lerna/lib/utils/logger';
import path from 'path';

const newPublishTaggedInDir = logger.logifyAsync('npmUtils.publishTaggedInDir', (tag, dir, callback) => {
  const cmd = `cd ${dir}/dist && cp ../package.json . && npm publish --tag ${tag}`;
  child.exec(cmd, (err, stdout, stderr) => {
    callback(stderr || err, stdout);
  });
});

// Manually require npmUtils to load it into the cache
require('lerna/lib/utils/npmUtils');

// Patch the exports
const modulePath = path.resolve(__dirname, '../node_modules/lerna/lib/utils/npmUtils.js');
require('module')._cache[modulePath].exports.publishTaggedInDir = newPublishTaggedInDir;

// Run the original binary
require('lerna/bin/lerna');

[jacobwgillespie]

Do you mean running npm publish in a nested directory within each package?

Sorry, super late reply, but yes. The idea is that the npm publish would run inside a subdirectory, like packages/package-name/dist, as that would give more control over what appeared in the final published package beyond a basic .npmignore, for example a customized package.json or README different from the parent.

Perhaps a key inside package.json could control this behavior:

{
  "lerna": {
    "publishDir": "dist"
  }
}

[evocateur]

@jacobwgillespie What you describe is quite possible in stock npm (which is what lerna strives to emulate when it comes to publishing): a prepublish script to generate the artifacts and move them in-place, and a postpublish script to clean up the generated artifacts. I don’t think you need to run npm publish in a different directory.

Or, even simpler, just configure "main": "dist/index.js" in package.json? Use the files array to customize what is included in the tarball, perhaps.