Best practice for developing packages

Hi.
In an upcoming project we want to have a "plugin system" and each plugin comes with the package manager and is hosted on a private npm.
Some plugins may be big, but others are very small.

To develop plugin code and edit prefabs, I created an Unity project with just the plugins inside the Assets folder. I also created a little script that's add a menu item to the context menu with whom I can publish the package to my local npm server automatically.

But I came to a point where this setup didn't work out very well, that was when I added dependencies to my package.json.. Because Unity automatically detects the package.json and processes its content.
When I add a dependency, it automatically creates a "node_modules" subfolder and "npm installs" all dependencies to this folder. That means that I had duplicate code in my project and that breaks the build.

So now to my question:
Is there a best practice for developing a packages for the package manager?
I think I need a Unity project to test the code and create prefabs etc.. But creating a Unity project for each package seems to me like an overkill. Can I maybe stop Unity to process my package.json inside the Assets folder, that would solve my problem either(at least for the moment).

Edit: I use Unity 2019.1.0.b2

Karl

 

Unity uses the npm protocol but not the npm client. Therefore, it will never create any "node_modules" directories. Something else in your toolchain must be executing "npm install".

I have a project like you describe, containing various packages in subdirectories of the "Assets" folder, each with its own "package.json", and then I publish them to my private npm repository. I haven't encountered any issues with this setup.

 

When I delete the "node_modules" afterwards, everything works fine and on "normal recompile" the "node_modules" is not created.
But when I double click the package.json and change the version(or anything else) in Visual Studio and go back to Unity, then after compilation the "node_modules" is there and a package-lock.json is also created.
When Unity is not started and I compile the project only in VS, nothing suspicious happens. So it is definitely something Unity is triggering with its compilation.

The compiler errors are of course ONLY happening when I define some "dependencies" in the "package.json" that are already in the same project.

I have this behavior on Win10 with Unity 2019.1.0b2 and 2018.3.5f1.

 

@maximeb_unity, thanks for you answer. That was it!! VS did something crazy when i let Unity compile the project, when Unity was not opened and I compiled it via VS only, this problem did not exist.
The Link to the stackoverflow solved my problem. Simply disable the "Package Restore" feature.

I also moved all my packages to the Plugins folder. I have tried it previously but back then it did not work, maybe my mistake. Now it works like a charm.
The only thing I needed was an asmdef in each plugin, otherwise I did not see the code in VS.


One other thing I discovered was that when I call the following code and I have selected one of my plugins, I am not actually getting the actual folder name of my plugin, but the plugin name specified in the package.json. Is this a bug, or intended behaviour?

Code (CSharp):

1. foreach (var obj in Selection.GetFiltered(typeof(UnityEngine.Object), SelectionMode.Assets))
2. {
3.      UnityEngine.Debug.Log(AssetDatabase.GetAssetPath(obj));
4. }

 

Thanks for pointing that out. The Unity System.IO uses the path as it would be there, so no problem here but I handed over the path to my external batch script and that logically did not find the path.
I have simply renamed all the folders to the right package name, now I have no problems anymore.

Sorry, of course I meant the Packages folder..