father

father is an NPM package development tool designed to help developers build, bundle, and publish NPM packages more efficiently and with higher quality.

Key features include:

• Dual Build Modes: Supports both Bundless (for ESModule and CommonJS outputs) and Bundle (for UMD outputs) modes.
• Multiple Build Cores: The Bundle mode uses Webpack. The Bundless mode supports esbuild, Babel, and SWC, which can be switched via configuration.
• Type Generation: Automatically generates .d.ts type definitions for TypeScript modules during both source builds and dependency pre-bundling.
• Persistent Caching: Supports persistent caching for all output types to speed up incremental builds.
• Project Health Checks: Performs checks for common NPM package development pitfalls to ensure stable releases.
• Micro-generators: Adds common engineering capabilities to projects, such as setting up Jest for testing.
• Dependency Pre-bundling (Experimental): Provides out-of-the-box dependency pre-bundling to improve stability for Node.js frameworks/libraries by insulating them from upstream dependency updates.

father is an NPM package development tool designed to help developers build, generate build artifacts, and publish NPM packages more efficiently and with higher quality.

Key features include:

• Dual Build Modes: Supports both Bundless and Bundle modes. ESModule and CommonJS outputs use Bundless mode, while UMD outputs use Bundle mode.
• Multiple Build Cores: Bundle mode uses Webpack. Bundless mode supports esbuild, Babel, and SWC, which can be switched via configuration.
• Type Generation: Supports generating .d.ts type definitions for both source code builds and dependency pre-bundling.
• Persistent Caching: Supports persistent caching for all output types to speed up incremental builds.
• Project Health Check: Includes a "doctor" feature to check for common mistakes in NPM package development.
• Micro-generators: Can add common engineering capabilities to projects, such as setting up jest for testing.
• Dependency Pre-bundling (Experimental): Provides out-of-the-box dependency pre-bundling to improve stability for Node.js frameworks/libraries.

Father is an NPM package development tool designed for efficient and reliable package development, build artifact generation, and publishing. Its core capabilities include:

• Dual-mode Build: Uses Bundless mode for ESModule and CommonJS outputs, and Bundle mode for UMD outputs.
• Multiple Build Engines: Bundle mode uses Webpack. Bundless mode supports esbuild, Babel, and SWC.
• Type Generation: Automatically generates .d.ts type definitions for TypeScript modules.
• Persistent Caching: Supports persistent caching across all output types for faster incremental builds.
• Project Inspection: Identifies common pitfalls in NPM package development.
• Micro Generators: Provides engineering capabilities like setting up Jest.
• Dependency Pre-Bundling (Experimental): Pre-bundles dependencies to improve stability and prevent issues from upstream updates.

Dependency pre-bundling is an experimental feature in Father designed only for Node.js projects. It involves compiling a project's dependencies (including transitive dependencies) into a single output in advance. The project's source code is then modified to import these dependencies directly from the pre-bundled output rather than from node_modules.

Key Benefits

• Smaller/Faster Installation: Consolidates complex dependency trees into a single file, reducing the size and installation time of published NPM packages.
• Improved Stability: Protects against breaking changes in upstream dependencies by locking the dependency state until you choose to re-bundle.
• Zero Installation Warnings: Since dependencies are included in the package, users won't encounter peerDependencies validation warnings during NPM installation.

WARNING

This feature is experimental. It may struggle with dynamic require/import statements or code that expects to access adjacent files in the original dependency structure.

Bundless is a file-to-file build mode where father performs parallel compilation of source files without processing dependencies. It is the default mode used when outputting ESModule (esm) and CommonJS (cjs) formats in father 4.

How Bundless works:

1. TypeScript modules: Compiled to JavaScript modules with corresponding .d.ts type files generated.
2. JavaScript modules: Compiled to JavaScript modules with compatibility transformations applied.
3. Other modules (e.g., .less, .css): Directly copied to the output directory without compilation.

Advantages:

• Allows selective importing of specific files from the output.
• Provides better debuggability.
• Recommended for most projects.

# Example source structure
.
└── src
    ├── index.less
    ├── index.tsx
    └── util.js

# Example Bundless output structure
.
└── dist
    ├── index.d.ts
    ├── index.js
    ├── index.less
    └── util.js

Dependency pre-bundling is an experimental feature in father designed exclusively for Node.js projects. Do not use this for browser-oriented projects.

Pre-bundling compiles your project's dependencies (and their dependencies) into a single output, and modifies your project's source code to import from these pre-bundled artifacts instead of the original packages.

Benefits

• Smaller and faster NPM installations: Reduces the complex dependency tree into a single bundled file, making the package smaller and faster to install.
• Improved stability: Protects your project from unexpected breaking changes in underlying dependencies by locking the dependency state into your pre-bundled artifacts.
• Zero installation warnings: Since dependencies are bundled, users won't encounter peerDependencies validation warnings during NPM installation.

Risks

This feature is experimental. It may struggle with dynamic require/import or scenarios where adjacent files need to be read from a dependency. Use with caution.