Shake depending on on node_modules directory

Question

I am using Shake with an npm based project, but am baffled by how to handle the node_modules folder. The flow should be simple from what I can tell:

• Any change to package.json would cause node_modules to be re-populated.
• All the changes to node_modules and/or main.ts would cause a typescript related script to fire. In this case it would only run the once for the entire collection of changes.

How do I encode those dependencies?

Answer 1

The problem is that node_modules is a directory rather than a file, and you can't depend on directories. The solution is to create a fake file, along the lines of:

"node_modules/.stamp" %> \out -> do
    need ["package.json"]
    cmd_ "npm update"
    copyFile' "package.json" out

"main.ts.out" %> \out -> do
    need ["node_modules/.stamp","main.ts"]
    cmd_ "whatever"

The only "weird" bit above is that we copyFile' the package.json for our stamp file. That's a trick so that if we have hash-checking on the files then the .stamp file changes, whereas if we always wrote "" to it then it wouldn't.