Plugin development is a bit difficult locally

Choose one: is this a 🐛 bug report or 🙋 feature request?

🙋 Support npm linked plugins!

🎛 Configuration (.babelrc, package.json, cli command)

The configuration isn’t important here, but because I can’t link a plugin, I can’t test to see if it works before submitting my package to npm.

🤔 Expected Behavior

Well, by the description of the problem, it should be supported, I would think!

😯 Current Behavior

It currently does not support linked plugins.

💁 Possible Solution

I haven’t enough information on how npm link works, but it would be great to learn, since I’m trying to design something similar in nature to parcel (not a js packager).

🔦 Context

I am trying to accomplish creating a plugin locally so that I can start to help parcel support different sorts of file types.

💻 Code Sample

This is not necessary.

🌍 Your Environment

Windows 10, latest node, latest npm. I do not use yarn personally.

[elsassph]

1. Alternative option that I’m using because I’m hacking Parceljs:

In your sandbox project, create 2 scripts to manually call Parceljs with your plugin:

// start.js
const Bundler = require('parcel-bundler');

process.env.NODE_ENV = process.env.NODE_ENV || 'development';

// you may be messing quite a bit in a new plugin so you may want to add error capture
process.on('unhandledRejection', (reason, p) => {
    console.log('Unhandled Rejection at: Promise', p, 'reason:', reason);
});

// manually set up the bundler
const bundler = new Bundler('./index.html');

bundler.addPackager('ext', require.resolve('./MyPackager'));
bundler.addAssetType('ext', require.resolve('./MyAsset'));

bundler.serve(1234, false);

// build.js
const Bundler = require('parcel-bundler');

process.env.NODE_ENV = 'production';

// you may be messing quite a bit in a new plugin so you may want to add error capture
process.on('unhandledRejection', (reason, p) => {
    console.log('Unhandled Rejection at: Promise', p, 'reason:', reason);
});

// manually set up the bundler
const bundler = new Bundler('./index.html');

bundler.addPackager('ext', require.resolve('./MyPackager'));
bundler.addAssetType('ext', require.resolve('./MyAsset'));

bundler.bundle();

Run as node start.js / node build.js.

I’ve added these scripts to my package.json:

  "scripts": {
    "clean": "rm -rf .cache && rm -rf dist",
    "start": "node script/start.js",
    "build": "node script/build.js"
  },

PS: I’m on Windows but I have bash commands in my PATH (it’s an option when you install msysgit ).

PPS: never run yarn clean - always yarn run clean

[elsassph]

I had the same problem - there are different ways to handle that (they could be documented on Parcel website):

1. Using npm link

• create a test parceljs project,

• install your local plugin (this copies your plugin in your test project):

    npm install C:\path\to\parcel-plugin-myplugin
  

• use npm link to replace the installed copy by a symlink to your plugin sources:

    # in plugin directory
    npm link
    # in your test project directory
    npm link parcel-plugin-myplugin
  

Now you can edit your plugin sources.