npm link dev packages when using docker dev containers

Question

Use npm link for authoring multiple packages simultaneously in docker dev containers

PkgA is a dependency of PkgB, I'm making changes to both. Goal is to be able to link PkgA in PkgB without publishing each small update and re-installing. npm|yarn link solve this, but I'm developing in docker containers.

https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/14325

Answer 1

1. Create a directory on the host machine to serve as the global repo

(I like to make a docker dir and put all of my volumes in it)

mkdir -p ~/docker/volumes/yalc

2. Mount the volume in both (or more) dev containers

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/containers-advanced

devcontainer.json

...
"mounts": ["source=/Users/evan/docker/volumes/yalc,target=/yalc,type=bind,consistency=cached"],
...

and rebuild the container

3. Install yalc and publish the package (In dependency repo container)

https://www.npmjs.com/package/yalc

npm i yalc -g
yalc publish --store-folder /yalc

--store-folder tells yalc to publish the repo to our volume

4. Link to the package in consuming repo

consider adding yalc to .gitignore first:

.yalc
yalc.lock

Run the link command

npm i yalc -g
yalc link PkgA --store-folder /yalc

Where PkgA is the name of the package as defined in it's package.json