Starting projects with npm
For Node.js projects, the settings and configurations are stored inside a file named package.json
, located at the root of the repository. The npm CLI tool provides a npm init
command, which will initiate a mini-wizard that helps you compose your package.json
file. So, inside our project directory, run npm init
to initiate the wizard.
The wizard will ask you a series of questions, but also provides sensible defaults. Let's go through each question one by one:
package name
: We are happy with the default name ofhobnob
(derived from the directory name), so we can just press theReturn
key to continue.version
: We're going to follow semantic versioning (semver) here and use major version 0(0.y.z
) to indicate that our code base is under initial development, and that the API is not stable. Semver also recommends that our initial release be0.1.0
.
description
: A brief description of your project; if we make our application public on npmjs.com, this description will appear...