How to write a reusable private library for Angular 2+

Question

I have created a generic framework for creating dashboards which consists of multiple modules using Angular-CLI.

Some modules are completely independent. Developers who are using this library can add the modules on their project on demand. I had a previous version of this framework created in Angular Js 1.0, in this I have delivered as javascript min files.

What are the things I have to take care to create this Library as private not for public or is there any way to package my modules as separate and deliver without NPM?

Answer 1

This question boils down to two independent tasks: Creating the library package and publishing it internally.

Create the library package

In order to create a library with AOT support, you need to compile it using ngc -p src/tsconfig-aot.json.

tsconfig-aot.json is a copy of tsconfig.json with an additional section:

 "files": [
   "./app/index.ts"
 ],
 "angularCompilerOptions": {
   "annotateForClosureCompiler": true,
   "genDir": "../dist/out-lib-tsc",
   "skipMetadataEmit" : false,
   "skipTemplateCodegen": true,
   "strictMetadataEmit": true,
   "flatModuleOutFile": "libname.js",
   "flatModuleId": "libname"
 }

I need to fix the directory structure by moving the files from src/app to the root of the output directory. Then you copy src/app and src/asserts to the output directory.

There are several detailed guides out there. For example Distributing an Angular Library - The Brief Guide

Publish the library package

There are several options to publish private libraries:

• reference a branch in a git repository Note: It is probably a good idea to use different repositories for developing (without compiler output) and publishing
• npm offers private repositories for a fee
• you can setup a local registry (for example Artifactory or Sinopia)