Ember app use addon installed as transitive dependency

Question

Can an Ember app use an addon that is installed as a transitive dependency? I have a local Ember addon that lists ember-angle-bracket-invocation-polyfill as a dependency in package.json. When I install the addon into an Ember app using ember install path/to/addon, I'm unable to use ember-angle-bracket-invocation-polyfill. Any help is appreciated!

Answer 1

An addon could add dependencies as part of it's installation process. This is usually done in the default blueprint. The default blueprint is a blueprint having the exact same name as the addon. It's automatically run after addon installation by ember-cli. This is the main reason why addons should be installed by ember install <addon-name> and not only by adding it as a dependency using npm or yarn.

Ember-cli provides different methods to add a dependency depending on it's type. As ember-angle-bracket-invocation-polyfill is an ember addon, addAddonsToProject() should be used for your case. It expects an object having a array with addon names under packages key.

For your example the blueprint would look like:

// blueprints/your-addon-name/index.js
module.exports = {
  normalizeEntityName() {}, // no-op since we're just adding dependencies

  afterInstall() {
    // Add addons to package.json and run defaultBlueprint
    return this.addAddonsToProject({
      // a packages array defines the addons to install
      packages: [
        // name is the addon name, and target (optional) is the version
        {name: 'ember-angle-bracket-invocation-polyfill'}
      ]
    });
  }
};

More information Working with dependencies chapter of ember-cli docs.