build-strap

A suite of functions to help with writing build scripts using TypeScript (or javascript) code (which run on node).

This project builds itself, so take a look in the targets/ folder for an example. Run ./bs to build.

Create a "zero dependency" bootstrapped build

You can set up your project to build with (practically) no pre-requisite dependencies.

• Copy the build-strap-cli into the root of your project.

curl -o bs https://raw.githubusercontent.com/murrayju/build-strap-cli/master/bs && chmod +x bs
curl -o bs.ps1 https://raw.githubusercontent.com/murrayju/build-strap-cli/master/bs.ps1
curl -o bs.bat https://raw.githubusercontent.com/murrayju/build-strap-cli/master/bs.bat

Add the dependency reference

Add build-strap to your package.json (likely in the devDependencies section).

yarn add -D build-strap

Add meta information to your package.json

By default, the build tools read project-specific configuration from your package.json file. Add this information as needed for your specific project.

{
  "name": "your-project-name",
  "version": "1.2.3",
  "buildStrap": {
    "nodeVersion": "24.18.0",
    "yarnVersion": "1.22.22",
    "repoType": "git",
    "copyright": "your company",
    "mainBranch": "main",
    "npm": {
      "publish": true,
    },
    "docker": {
      "registry": "ghcr.io",
      "repository": "your-company",
      "name": "your-project-name"
    }
  }
}

mainBranch

The name of the single long-lived branch of the repository (defaults to main). All work happens on short-lived branches that are merged into it via pull request.

docker

• registry: base URL for the docker registry, as needed by docker push.
• repository: the name of the (organization's) docker repository, in which to put this project
• name: the name of the project, used as the docker image name.

Branching and Release Workflow

This project (and projects built with it) use a single long-lived branch (main) with short-lived work branches merged into it via pull request. There is no separate development or release branch.

Releases are triggered by pushing a semver tag (with an optional leading v) to a commit on main:

git tag v1.2.3 && git push origin v1.2.3

The version being built is determined as follows:

Build	npm version	npm dist-tag	docker tags
Tag v1.2.3 on main	1.2.3	latest	latest, 1, 1.2, 1.2.3
Tag v1.2.3-rc.1 on main	1.2.3-rc.1	rc	1.2.3-rc.1, latest-rc
Untagged commit on main	1.2.3-main.42	next	latest-main
Work branch / pull request	1.2.3-my-branch.42	branch	(none)

For untagged builds, the base version comes from the version field in package.json and the build number comes from --buildNum= (or the BUILD_NUMBER environment variable). For release builds, the version comes from the git tag, and the build refuses to publish if the tagged commit is not contained in main.

Write Your Build Script

See the reference implementations (below) for a complete example of a robust build environment. The library exports many useful functions. Here are some of the most important (see source for more):

setPkg

This function must be called for much of the functionality (that reads configuration from the package.json) to work. Pass it a javascript object containing the parsed content of package.json (or construct the object config directly in code).

import { setPkg } from 'build-strap';
import pkg from '../package.json';

// Call this before anything else.
setPkg(pkg);
...

runCli

Useful when building your own build from scratch. Helps to interpret CLI arguments and invoke js files as build targets. Uses buildLog to timestamp everything.

This example should serve as your entrypoint (from yarn run).

import { run, runCli, setPkg } from 'build-strap';
import pkg from '../package.json';

setPkg(pkg);

if (require.main === module) {
  delete require.cache[__filename];
  runCli(path => require(`./${path}`).default);
}

publish

Takes the contents of a directory, gzips it up, and publishes to various artifact repositories (as configured in your package.json, see above).

import { publish } from 'build-strap';

publish(
  'path/to/dist/folder',
  'path/to/output.tgz',
  reallyPublish, // `true` to actually publish, otherwise just make the bundle
);

buildLog

Write out to the console in a timestamp prefixed format consistent with the rest of the build output.

import { buildLog } from 'build-strap';

buildLog('Hello world');

NPM Credentials

In order to publish to NPM, proper credentials must be provided to the script. By default, these are read from the NPM_CREDS environment variable, but it is also possible to pass them as an argument to most functions. This is expected to be a JSON encoded string in the following format:

{ "email": "builder@your-company.com", "username":"builder", "password":"abc123" }