evanbacon/gadd

download and install node modules from a GitHub monorepo

github add
download and install packages from a github monorepo

npx gadd <username/repo> --path packages/library

# Example: install React from github.com/facebook/react

npx gadd facebook/create-react-scripts -p packages/react-dev-utils

Why tho

Big epic projects like react, jest, babel, expo, etc. keep their packages in a monorepo under the packages/ directory. These packages cannot be installed directly using NPM or Yarn which makes it awkward and hard to test them without being published. Both NPM and Yarn should probably add first-class support for this feature but they don't 😐 So for now you can use gadd.

How

gadd is a super light-weight package that clones the GitHub tar to a temporary folder, then extracts the tar into a .gadd folder in your project. After that gadd installs the package using your package manager tool of choice!

• Modules are installed in your project's .gadd/ folder.
• You can add .gadd/ to your .gitignore to keep the dev modules out of your git history.
• Big repos can take a while to install, this is cuz GitHub doesn't support downloading individual folders.
• You can install any repo by ommitting the --path arg, but it might make more sense to just install the package directly with NPM.

Flags

Usage: gadd <project-root> [options]

Downloads and installs NPM packages from GitHub monorepos

Options:
  -V, --version      output the version number
  -p, --path [name]  The path inside of a GitHub repo where the package lives.
  -d, --dev          Install as a dev dependency
  --use-npm          Use npm to install dependencies. (default when Yarn is not installed)
  --no-install       Skip installing npm packages after extracting.
  -h, --help         output usage information

gadd's Issues

How to define a branch name

I assume

npx gadd react-navigation/react-navigation -p packages/core

Downloads and installs the react-navigation package from the default branch. What if we want to install it from a specific branch?
Would be great if we had a parameter like -b to define the branch name, or -t to define a tag.

Private repo

Nice work here! Already used and it works smoothly! But do you have any intention on adding private repo usability?