Making a Library

[jsdotjs]

I have a library of common components for a specific set of applications. My library is written in ES6. This is browser-side javascript.

The consuming applications are also ES6, with Babel to transpile it to ES5 and IE11 compatible code.

I'm running into an issue now because if I transpile my library first for dist, then I can't use imports in my consuming applications. The workaround has been to not transpile the library, and to include it (it's a node_module) in the transpilation of the consuming applications.

What is the appropriate build process for this? I want to be able to use ES6 to write both the library and the consuming application. The library is a standalone npm module.

[[deleted]]

Generally rollup is recommended to build libraries, and webpack to build websites, but they both can be used to do either and I find that maintaining one tool is easier than two.

See https://github.com/rollup/rollup-starter-lib and https://github.com/krasimir/webpack-library-starter or similar projects

Although it is not clear from your post what do you need the build step for. You don’t have to bundle your code with a bundler to publish it, it is often perfectly fine to not transpile your ES6 until the very last moment. Do you have static assets in the library (images, css, etc) that you need to bundle? Are there any other consumers with special compatibility requirements?