Copy-module-alias NPM

If you use `@` in your linked module names, there is a risk this module will cause data loss

See this issue https://github.com/Rush/link-module-alias/issues/3

copy-module-alias

Setup private modules within your repo to get away from error-prone typing of long relative paths like these:

require('../../../../some/very/deep/module')

Just create an alias and do it cleanly:

var module = require('@deep/module')
// Or ES6
import module from '@deep/module'

You can setup aliases both to individual files and to directories.

WARNING Use this module only in final applications. It will not work inside published npm packages.

Install

npm i --save-dev copy-module-alias

Usage

Add your custom configuration to your package.json (in your application's root), and setup automatic initialization in your scripts section.

Note: you can use @ in front of your module but before of the possible data loss https://github.com/Rush/link-module-alias/issues/3

"scripts": {
  "postinstall": "copy-module-alias"
},
// Aliases
"_moduleAliases": {
  "~root"      : ".", // Application's root
  "~deep"      : "src/some/very/deep/directory/or/file",
  "@my_module" : "lib/some-file.js", // can be @ - but see above comment and understand the associated risk
  "something"  : "src/foo", // Or without ~. Actually, it could be any string
}

If you encounter issues with installing modules, you may want to set up the preinstall script as well:

"scripts": {
  "postinstall": "copy-module-alias",
  "preinstall": "command -v copy-module-alias && copy-module-alias clean || true"
}

How does it work?

For aliases to directories, we copy files.
For aliases to files, we create proxy modules with a package.json containing "main" that points to the target file

Background

This module it's almost a drop in replacement for another package https://www.npmjs.com/package/module-alias - use module module-alias if you like runtime require hooks and use copy-module-alias if you want good compatibility with your IDE and no runtime hacks.

The key differentiator of copy-module-alias is copying all modules statically in form of symlinks and proxy packages inside node_modules, there is no hacky require hook and you don't need to load any supporting packages.

The key motivator to create copy-module-alias was to make it work in environments that don't support symlinks.