NPM package is bundled with useless files and is too big (3 Mo that can be reduced to 620 Ko)

First of all: NeDB is awesome!

Big NPM package with unnecessary files

The NPM package is quite big and includes many unnecessary files (and dependencies) for a Node.js usage.

Uncompressed NPM package size is about 3 Mo and can be reduced to 620 Ko !

Here is the total size with dependencies:

 88K    async
132K    binary-search-tree
1.1M    localforage         (UNNECESSARY)
 92K    mkdirp
1.4M    nedb
184K    underscore

And the detailed size of naked NeDB package

4.0K    LICENSE
 44K    README.md
 44K    benchmarks          (USELESS)
4.0K    bower.json          (USELESS)
916K    browser-version     (USELESS)
4.0K    index.js
 96K    lib
4.0K    package.json
292K    test                (USELESS)
 20K    test_lac            (USELESS)

Potential Solutions

I’m focused on the NPM deployment so I may miss some browser deployment considerations… Let me know if it make sense…

.npmignore ?

I think NeDB can easily save 1.30 Mo by adding the following .npmignore file to the repo:

benchmarks
bower.json
browser-version
test
test_lac

PS: This has already been done in the bower.json file.

Move localforage to devDependencies ?

Now about the localforage dependency… it looks like it is already bundled into browser-version/out… Can we simply move localforage dependencies to devDependencies in package.json?

[louischatriot]

Thanks for the kind words 😃

So there are also standalone versions of NeDB for the browser which clock in at 292KB and 98 KB when minified: https://github.com/louischatriot/nedb/blob/master/browser-version/out/nedb.js and https://github.com/louischatriot/nedb/blob/master/browser-version/out/nedb.min.js

That said you are right about the server version, the npm package itself could be cleaned to only include the necessary files. Will try to do it when I have the time!

[bahmutov]

You can whitelist the files quickly in package.json and check the published size, see https://glebbahmutov.com/blog/smaller-published-NPM-modules/ for example to measure NPM published size you can add script command

"scripts": {
  "size": "t=\"$(npm pack .)\"; wc -c \"${t}\"; tar tvf \"${t}\"; rm \"${t}\";"
}

This will print the list of files included in published tar as well as total size