npm: slim down distributed files.

[stephenplusplus]

https://www.npmjs.org/doc/files/package.json.html#files

Best to keep it slim 👍 Did I miss any files?

[ryanseys]

This is effectively the inverse effect of .npmignore (which we have), so we should pick one and crown it the victor. 👑

[stephenplusplus]

Oh, wow. Didn't know we had that! I prefer a whitelist, and less root level dot file noise. I'll update the PR to remove that file, then leave it to the judges 🔨

[ryanseys]

A whitelist will be shorter than the .npmignore blacklist if we really want to exclude a lot from npm publish but it's always nice to have more info available to the developer for debugging and whitelists are known to be more error-prone if not done correctly (ahem, Google IO 2014 @silvolu & @rakyll). E.g. README for npmjs.org to display is always nice, and tests so that Windows users can run tests from node_modules easily and report their errors 😄

So at the end of the day, I'm really indifferent as long as it's done correctly. 👍

[ryanseys]

That final statement is a lie, I changed my mind. I like the blacklist / .npmignore even if it means more dotfiles.

[stephenplusplus]

but it's always nice to have more info available to the developer for debugging

This should be done by cloning the repository, not by sorting through files in a node_modules directory.

whitelists are known to be more error-prone if not done correctly

I think each are as likely to cause problems if misused, but since "main" is defined in package.json to point to "lib", along with our dependencies, our scripts, etc. it makes the most sense to me to continue to use that as the source of truth of how we define our project.

E.g. README for npmjs.org to display is always nice

npm includes the readme by default.

[ryanseys]

This should be done by cloning the repository

Fair enough. Don't really know what the convention is for that but I always like to run tests on the specific version installed rather than trying to track it down, clone and checkout.. Some projects exclude tests, I like to keep them in but that's just me.

I think each are as likely to cause problems if misused

Tru dat.

npm includes the readme by default.

Didn't know this! 👍

You know what you're doing, carry on 😄