How to Disable download missing package each time in meteor? - meteor

I tried to create meteor web application, but meteor download missing package each time when I change my code, and it was unnecessary.
So, can I config it only runs at the first time?
Thanks!

Could you add the actual message on the package it tries to download? Anyway, there are two potential locations where meteor looks for packages that need to be installed.
This is which each Meteor application and it's using Meteor Atmosphere packages. You can find these at .meteor folder in your project root file called packages path ./meteor/packages
Other potential place is packages.json in project root. It exists if you have used npm install or meteor npm install within the project.
Deleting unnecessary packages from these files should do the trick.

Related

Hot swap of local Meteor package

I am using local Meteor package for my app (not posted on Atmosphere.js).
When I update this package elsewhere, I proceed with the following:
Update version of the package.
Delete old package from /packages/ directory of the live app.
See my program search for packages 3(?) times and then crash:
Your app is crashing. Here's the latest log:
Errors prevented startup:
While selecting package versions:
error: unknown package in top-level dependencies: vladimir3000:testpack
Your application has errors. Waiting for file change.
Copy new package with new version.
See my app picking up the changes and going live again:
vladimir3000:testpack upgraded from 0.0.2 to 0.0.3
=>Meteor server restarted
Is there a way to avoid step 3 and more elegantly instruct meteor to replace one package with another. Meteor update would not work as the package is not on atmosphere.js. Or hot swap is something from SOA world not from blood and fibers of Meteor javascript?
You can simply paste over the files for the package.
When you delete the old package, Meteor sees a file change and rebuilds the app. Since the package no longer exists in the packages directory, Meteor will try to pull it down from Atmosphere since it sees that there is a dependency on vladimir3000:testpack in .meteor/packages.
It will attempt to resolve this dependency a few times, with each build failing because the package you are referencing is unknown.
You can stop meteor and delete and replace the folder. Or you can copy and paste over the folder. The second method is preferable because Meteor will simply rebuild with all of the new files, rather than rebuilding and trying to resolve the dependency using Atmosphere.

Meteor packages -- how does it work?

I downloaded a Meteor Starter project called MeteorAdmin.
In the root of its directory tree, you find a packages directory that contains few packages (boostrap, comments, few others) and also, in the .meteor directory there's a file called packages that defines the dependencies of this project.
What is the difference between them? What I found interesting is that .meteor/packages contains bootstrap as well. In theory shouldn't that be enough so that bootstrap would get downloaded to the project?
The meteor packages file simply lists all of the apps dependencies as well as the load order of each (top to bottom). You can edit this file if you know what you are doing, but it's probably better to leave it alone until you are more familiar with Meteor.
The way you add packages is by typing meteor add <package-name> in your terminal and then it will be added to your project. Additionally, the name of the package will be added to the bottom of your packages file.
A meteor app can have local packages that are defined in the packages folder of the root directory. This project likely is implementing it's own bootstrap package and then added it with the meteor command I listed above. Once a local package is added to your project with the meteor add command it's package name will appear in the packages file just like packages from Atmosphere. I hope that answers your question... Let me know if you were looking for something more specific.

How to re-use an already installed package in Meteor?

I installed couple of packages for 'Project A' (e.g bootstrap) assuming that it will be available for all subsequent projects. But when a new meteor project 'Project B' was created, meteor list showed only default packages. So my assumption that meteor packages are like ruby gems available globally is incorrect. As I work offline every now and then, Is there a way I can manually copy/re-use installed packages?
Yes they are similar to gems. Packages are installed in ~/.meteor/packages, in precompiled form. They can be installed globally this way.
When you add a package to your project it will essentially copy the package from there into your build-cache directory hidden in the .meteor directory of your project.
To install a package locally where you can easily re-use it you would have to clone the github repository of the package and place the output in the /packages directory of your Meteor app.
For example for bootstrap, twbs:bootstrap you would clone this reposistory: https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap, into a directory like /packages/twbs:bootstrap (name doesn't matter if its defined in the package.js file on the repository.
In general you can easily re-use a package without the hassle of adding it in manually like so. It's better to use the global packages which are kept up to date.
The trouble comes with being offline. If you use a local package its nearly guaranteed to always work. Whereas the global ones can give a bit of trouble once in a while when you try to add a package in as meteor tries to check the package is up to date, especially where npm packages are involved with the package.
To keep it short if you added a package in using meteor add twbs:bootstrap you should most likely be able to add it to another project using the same command. Only if you keep your packages & meteor up to date.

meteor installing packages twice - client and server

I noticed that upon adding packages to Meteor with the command "meteor add packageName" (e.g. accounts-Facebook), all of them are added in the client/packages folder, which subsequently will put them all in the browser.
Why does this happen and how can this be prevented? They seem to be installed twice, once in server/packages and once in client/packages, I don't understand.
Meteor should put only client-relevant packages in the client folder.
Thanks!

What does the Meteor smart.lock file do?

What does the file smart.lock do for my meteor project? If I delete it from my project the app still works.
The smart.lock file is used by meteorite to handle your app's dependencies:
Meteorite writes to a smart.lock file in the app's root directory to
track the exact versions of its dependencies, even when it's set up in
a fresh environment.
From here. My original assumption about your problem was that you had no meteorite packages, which I was mistaken. Hubert points out in his comment that your project generally relies on smart.json and uses smart.lock as a cache (more info below), hence why the application continued to work on your own machine.

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