How to make Packages

A package consists of a directory of modules conforming to the ServerJS Securable Modules specification, and a “package.json” file in the root of the package containing the location of the modules, depedencies, and other metadata.

A package directory might have the following files and directories:

• package.json for package metadata like dependencies and overrides for the conventional directory names.
• local.json for overrides on package.json provided by the user.
• bin for executables.
• lib for all object code, including JavaScript modules, and C extensions.
• src for all buildable source code, including C and Java source code.
• jars for Java class trees and archives.
• packages/{name} for installed sub-packages.
• engines/{engine} for engine-specific packages.

package.json and local.json may contain the following attributes:

• name - the name of the package. The package system will only load one package with a given name. The name defaults to the name of the parent directory.
• author - the original author of the package. The author may be a String including an optional ( URL in parentheses ) and optional < email address in angle brackets >. Alternately, it may be an Object with any of name, email, and url attributes. The package reader normalizes authors to the latter Object form.
• maintainer - the package maintainer for the project as a String or Object just as the author attribute.
• contributors - may be an Array of additional author Strings.
• url - the URL of the project website.
• license - the name of the license as a String, with an optional URL in parentheses, or an Object with name and url attributes.
• description - a String describing the package. Most package descriptions end with a period/full stop.
• keywords - an Array of String keywords to assist users searching for the package with tusk search or tusk apropos.
• lib - a path or array of paths to top-level module directories provided in this package. Defaults to ["lib"].
• jars - for Rhino engines, a path or array of paths to directories to add to the Java CLASSPATH (uses a Java URLClassLoader, so accepts .jar paths and directory paths ending with /).
• packages - a path or array of paths to directories containing additional packages, defaults to ["packages"].
• engines - a path or array of paths to directories containing engine-specific packages, defaults to ["engines"]. These engine packages will be loaded if and in the prioritized order they appear in the system.engines array, and with higher priority that those in this package’s generic js path so that they can override engine-specific modules.

For more information on how packages are composed into catalogs, see the catalog reference.