Can I write npm package in CoffeeScript?

Question

I have used CoffeeScript for a while. Now I need to write a npm package, can I write it in CoffeeScript, or I should compile CoffeeScript into JavaScript?

Answer 1

If a lot of your modules have coffee-script in their devDependencies, it's useful to just globally install coffee-script instead of install it for each module (which takes much longer).

coffee-build is a global version manager for coffee-script.

Just add these 2 scripts to your package.json:

{
  "name": "my-coffee-module",
  "scripts": {
    "build": "coffee-build -v 1.11.x -b -o js src",
    "postinstall": "npm run build"
  }
}

Notice how -v 1.11.x is not an exact version, which allows implicit upgrades.

The only downfall is that users must npm install -g coffee-build before they can install your module.