How to share private meteor packages between multiple projects?

Question

If you want to use a package between two projects, what's the best way to handle it. Considering two scenarios :-

First Scenario

Git Repository with the two projects like

root folder
    -- Mobile App Folder
    -- Web Folder

So both projets are in the same repository

Second Scenario

Each project is in separate Git repositories and we want to share the package between those projects.

What's a good ways to handle each scenario? ( Either using the same method for both, or different methods for each scenario)

Answer 1

You need to be aware of how Meteor handles package scanning when confronted with meteor add package :

• searching for it inside the local packages/ folder of your app.
• searching for it inside every folder specified in the PACKAGE_DIRS environment variable.
• searching for it on Atmosphere.

Not sure about the specific order but I'm assuming the one that makes most sense.

So your question is basically where to store the package for an optimal workflow.

Using the fist scenario, you would store your private packages inside the app root folder under packages/, you'll just have to git pull from the repo to get the latest versions of the packages. Then you would have to make sure to define correctly the PACKAGE_DIRS env variable, something like this :

export PACKAGE_DIRS=$PACKAGE_DIRS:$HOME/meteor/my-repo/packages

Using the second scenario, you would store each private package on its own git repo, then pull them into a local $HOME/meteor/packages of yours and don't forget to set PACKAGE_DIRS appropriately.

export PACKAGE_DIRS=$PACKAGE_DIRS:$HOME/meteor/packages

I would tend to go with the second scenario if there's a chance that these private packages may be reused for other projects, if you are sure they only make sense in a particular project, then storing them along in the repo is OK.