protato

HMR. Auto-update parent module's child dependency when you update that child dependency's file

FAQ

Why

There are a lot of great projects (lerna, yarn workspaces, vscode) that solve code organization issues. I wanted a HMR tool that parsed a config and worked with my monolith tool of choice ( repo-genesis )

This is a summary of how Protato fits into my design/development flow.

How

Under the hood, this is using yalc which avoids some of the pain points around NPM global modules.

The reason I went with yalc was because of the difficulty of installing or linking modules to a specific directory in a cross-platform way.

References

• npm-folders
• protato-lib/pull/6 for a play-by-play of the discovery process(all the things to not do)

Name

The logo consists of a potato replacing the blue crystal in a Protoss Pylon

• “Protato” is a portmanteau of “potato” and “protoss”
• “Potato” from “hot potato”
• “Protoss” because of 2-way teleporting (warp gate, recall, etc)

Install (Optional)

If you'd rather not install, you can use npx

• Install CLI globally npm install -g protato

• Install CLI as dev dependency npm install -D protato

Usage

Watch your files and update your dependency tree automatically

protato watch

---

CLI Config

In order to watch your files, you need to supply protato with a config file. It must be named .protato.json

Example used in unit tests

{
    "parent": {
        "dir": "sandbox/node-starter"
    },
    "children": [
        {
            "dir": "sandbox/npm-starter-sample-module",
            "src": "src"
        },
        {
            "dir": "sandbox/library-genesis",
            "src": "src"
        }
    ]
}

What differentiates this unit test example is I'm making the parent a subdirectory as well. Normally, your parent directory would be your root directory/cwd. The sandbox directory was initialized using repo-genesis

Abstract example

• protato-cli
  • protato-lib
  • tacker

In this project example, I want "protato-cli" to update its dependencies whenever "protato-lib" or "tacker" are updated locally. Let's say I changed protato-lib/src/index.js, it would then trigger an update which would re-link the packages.

Breaking down the example

Name	Category	Attributes Description
protato.json	Config file name	this file should be declared at the root of your project
parent	Top-level key	this represents your entry point project; it relies on your child modules
children	Top-level key	modules you are working on locally
dir	Parent & Children key	root of children to watch or parent project to update; relative from cwd
src	Children key	specific directory to watch

---

Roadmap

CLI Commands

Status	Name	Description
✅	watch	Begin watching your child modules for updates
☑️	yalc	List your current packages; install yalc if directory not found.
☑️	config	Generate an empty config if you don't have one in your CWD.

CLI Flags

Status	Name	Description
✅	--help	Print help menu
☑️	--link	Add child package symlink in your parent project
☑️	--add	Pull child package contents into your parent project

Minor Features

• Currently doesn't update child module builds before re-linking

TODO: Create CLI flag and library logic to parse "build" in package.json before updating dependency

• Each child module relies on the same root directory. This is prohibitive.

TODO: Enable per-child-module cwd. Add object to config and handle parsing.

• Currently, child modules cannot exist outside of the current "monolith". They assume they same CWD

TODO:This is fine if repo-genesis is being used. But it could be annoying for others. Fix to this is allow absolute pathing. Add a "cwd" object to the config to specify root directory. Override the cwd default (be that process.cwd() or process.env.configRootDir)

• It'd be great to have a demo project.

TODO: Have to make some changes to repo-genesis (to allow auto-install modules)

• process.env.configRootDir was added but never tested or discussed in readme

TODO: Write unit test and update readme accordingly

• Especially in the case of newly cloned projects, it's annoying that protato will throw IF node_modules are missing.

CONTEXT: While npm install is an easy fix, it's obnoxious if there are multiple subdirectories being cloned via repo-genesis TODO: Add auto-install node_modules feature to protato-lib