Properly configure NPM package which depends on local packages

Question

I have this three local npm packages: C:\projects\A, C:\projects\B and C:\projects\main. Main is React app which is built with Webpack. Main depends on A and B, also A depends on B. We have our own "global" package manager which guarantees that packages will be located in same parent folder.

I want to suit these:

1. Node's (and webpack's) require will resolve local packages

2. I don't need to npm install in Main every time I change A or B

I did this in Main's package.json:

....
"dependencies": {
    "A": "file:../A",
    "B": "file:../B",
    "react": ...
    .........

But ran into strange problem: npm doesn't install all packages in A's and B's node_modules, so Webpack build fails. And I need to run npm install each time.

I googled and found linklocal, which replaces all local packages as symlinks. But ran into another problem:

linklocal does not install dependencies of linked dependencies, as such you typically end up installing dependencies of linked dependencies twice: once during npm install, then again after linklocal

So I ran linklocal and then npm install again in postinstall script. But npm@3 didn't do anything with symlinked folders:

npm WARN update-linked node_modules/A needs updating to 1.0.0 from 1.0.0 but we can't, as it's a symlink

Then I decided to modify postinstall to go to every symlinked module and run npm install from there. And it worked at first sight: installing ran well, as well as webpack bunding. But Webpack started bundling two copies of React (which is prohibited).

How to configure my packages properly?

Answer 1

In package A and package B you can have a preinstall script that execute webpack. This should resolve all the dependencies.
On your main package you should link to the dist(build) folder of package A and B.
Also check this library wml, it can help you to keep in sync your local dependencies.

package.json:

"scripts": { "preinstall": "webpack" }

Answer 2

If you do not need to build Main in other machines you could just do something like that in your project/Main

let C = require('C:\projects\A\index.js')

Or you could have a branch with

require('C:\projects\A\index.js')

And another with:

require('C')