npm-publish

Publish a package

Table of contents

Synopsis

npm publish [<tarball>|<folder>] [--tag <tag>] [--access <public|restricted>] [--otp otpcode] [--dry-run]

Publishes '.' if no argument supplied
Sets tag 'latest' if no --tag specified

Description

Publishes a package to the registry so that it can be installed by name.

By default npm will publish to the public registry. This can be overridden by specifying a different default registry or using a scope in the name (see package.json).

The publish will fail if the package name and version combination already exists in the specified registry.

Once a package is published with a given name and version, that specific name and version combination can never be used again, even if it is removed with npm unpublish.

As of npm@5, both a sha1sum and an integrity field with a sha512sum of the tarball will be submitted to the registry during publication. Subsequent installs will use the strongest supported algorithm to verify downloads.

Similar to --dry-run see npm pack, which figures out the files to be included and packs them into a tarball to be uploaded to the registry.

Files included in package

To see what will be included in your package, run npx npm-packlist. All files are included by default, with the following exceptions:

See developers for full details on what’s included in the published package, as well as details on how the package is built.

Configuration

tag

If you ask npm to install a package and don’t tell it a specific version, then it will install the specified tag.

Also the tag that is added to the package@version specified by the npm tag command, if no explicit tag is given.

When used by the npm diff command, this is the tag used to fetch the tarball that will be compared with the local files by default.

access

When publishing scoped packages, the access level defaults to restricted. If you want your scoped package to be publicly viewable (and installable) set --access=public. The only valid values for access are public and restricted. Unscoped packages always have an access level of public.

Note: Using the --access flag on the npm publish command will only set the package access level on the initial publish of the package. Any subsequent npm publish commands using the --access flag will not have an effect to the access level. To make changes to the access level after the initial publish use npm access.

dry-run

Indicates that you don’t want npm to make any changes and that it should only report what it would have done. This can be passed into any of the commands that modify your local installation, eg, install, update, dedupe, uninstall, as well as pack and publish.

Note: This is NOT honored by other network related commands, eg dist-tags, owner, etc.

otp

This is a one-time password from a two-factor authenticator. It’s needed when publishing or changing package permissions with npm access.

If not set, and a registry response fails with a challenge for a one-time password, npm will prompt on the command line for one.

workspace

Enable running a command in the context of the configured workspaces of the current project while filtering by running only the workspaces defined by this configuration option.

Valid values for the workspace config are either:

When set for the npm init command, this may be set to the folder of a workspace which does not yet exist, to create the folder and set it up as a brand new workspace within the project.

This value is not exported to the environment for child processes.

workspaces

Enable running a command in the context of all the configured workspaces.

This value is not exported to the environment for child processes.

See Also