Atom bundles a command line utility called apm
which we first used back in Command Line to search for and install packages via the command line. The apm
command can also be used to publish Atom packages to the public registry and update them.
There are a few things you should double check before publishing:
package.json
file has name
, description
, and repository
fields.package.json
file has a version
field with a value of "0.0.0"
.package.json
file has an engines
field that contains an entry for Atom such as: "engines": {"atom": ">=1.0.0 <2.0.0"}
.README.md
file at the root.repository
URL in the package.json
file is the same as the URL of your repository.Before you publish a package it is a good idea to check ahead of time if a package with the same name has already been published to the atom.io package registry. You can do that by visiting https://atom.io/packages/your-package-name
to see if the package already exists. If it does, update your package's name to something that is available before proceeding.
Now let's review what the apm publish
command does:
version
field in the package.json
file and commits it.Now run the following commands to publish your package:
cd path-to-your-package apm publish minor
If this is the first package you are publishing, the apm publish
command may prompt you for your GitHub username and password. If you have two-factor authentication enabled, use a personal access token in lieu of a password. This is required to publish and you only need to enter this information the first time you publish. The credentials are stored securely in your keychain once you login.
Your package is now published and available on atom.io. Head on over to https://atom.io/packages/your-package-name
to see your package's page.
With apm publish
, you can bump the version and publish by using
apm publish version-type
where version-type
can be major
, minor
and patch
.
The major
option to the publish command tells apm to increment the first number of the version before publishing so the published version will be 1.0.0
and the Git tag created will be v1.0.0
.
The minor
option to the publish command tells apm to increment the second number of the version before publishing so the published version will be 0.1.0
and the Git tag created will be v0.1.0
.
The patch
option to the publish command tells apm to increment the third number of the version before publishing so the published version will be 0.0.1
and the Git tag created will be v0.0.1
.
Use major
when you make a change that breaks backwards compatibility, like changing defaults or removing features. Use minor
when adding new functionality or options, but without breaking backwards compatibility. Use patch
when you've changed the implementation of existing features, but without changing the behaviour or options of your package. Check out semantic versioning to learn more about best practices for versioning your package releases.
You can also run apm help publish
to see all the available options and apm help
to see all the other available commands.