What is the reason for running "rimraf dist" command in the build script in package.json file?
"scripts": {
"build": "rimraf dist ..."
},
The rimraf package which you will probably find in the devDependencies
section of the package.json
you have, is used to safely remove files and folders on all platforms (Unix and Windows).
When you have a build system, you want to also make sure you remove the output files before re-emitting the build output content (especially in case you have removed some files which are not needed anymore). You could go ahead and do:
"scripts": {
"clean": "rm ./dist/* -Recurse -Force"
}
But that will work on Windows only, and sometimes will also give you problems due to issues around the use of *
. On Unix the command would be different. In order to make things better, rimraf
does the removal for you so you can simply invoke it in your scripts
/clean
section:
"scripts": {
"clean": "rimraf dist"
}
This will ensure your package.json
(your build system) to be cross-platform.
rimraf
Arm -rf
util for nodejs
$ rimraf dist
removes the dist
file or folder.
I guess the build script puts stuff inside the dist
directory and wants to remove the old stuff from the last time you build it.
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