npm doesn't respect .gitignore if ignored folder has an index.js in it.

[jdalton]

I noticed this behavior.
If my .gitignore looks like:

.DS_Store
legacy
node_modules
mobile

and I run npm pack

the package will contain the folders mobile and legacy if there is an index.js file in them. If I remove the index.js file it will ignore them.

The workaround atm is to include mobile and legacy in the .npmignore file as well.

[robertkowalski]

is anyone able to reproduce this? here is what i am doing:

mkdir bla && cd bla
npm init
echo "ente" >> .gitignore
mkdir ente
touch index.js
touch ente/index.js
cd ..
npm pack ./bla/
tar xvfz bla-0.0.0.tgz

[jdalton]

also do touch .npmignore. then try npm pack again.

[peter-mouland]

old issue, but as it's still open, i'll try to help close it.

What you describe is now the desired behaviour as mentioned in the docs, keeping-files-out-of-your-package:

If you want to include something that is excluded by your .gitignore file, you can create an empty .npmignore file to override it.

[jdalton]

@peter-mouland This is the opposite of that.
These folders should be ignored by npm as per the .gitignore file but are not.

[jdalton]

\cc @zkat

[zkat]

@jdalton Added to the milestone! Thanks a ton for the ping :)

[zkat]

@jdalton Hey so, I looked at this a little closer. I can't reproduce the behavior you described, for a couple of expected reasons:

• .npmignore completely overrides .gitignore. There is no merging involved.
• I assume when you say "it'll ignore mobile", you mean that there's files in there other than index.js. Empty directories are not included.
• It's possible that mobile was still going to be ignored if there were non-index.js contents, sometime in the past, but I can't see that being a problem with the way npm pack works now. I'll note you opened the issue back in 2013 originally, so I wouldn't be surprised :)

Based on that, and unless I'm misunderstanding your report, this seems to be working as intended. Is that the case?

[jdalton]

.npmignore completely overrides .gitignore. There is no merging involved.

That would explain why an empty .npmignore lets things through that .gitignore is ignoring.
If that's the case, and it's by design, then this issue can be closed.

[zkat]

Indeed. I think you already know about it, but there's a nice wiki page now that goes into detail about how this stuff works.

Since things seem to be working as expected, I'm closing this. There's a couple of issues/PRs that might affect this behavior, too, if you want to keep an eye on them or put in your 2c, specifically #12331 and #11669.

Cheers 💃

[jdalton]

Thanks!