Publishes a package to the registry so that it can be installed by name.
By default npm will publish to the public registry. This can be overridden
by specifying a different default registry or using a
scope in the name (see
package.json).
<folder>: A folder containing a package.json file
<tarball>: A url or file path to a gzipped tar archive containing a
single folder with a package.json file inside.
[--tag <tag>]: Registers the published package with the given tag, such
that npm install <name>@<tag> will install this version. By default,
npm publish updates and npm install installs the latest tag. See
npm-dist-tag for details about tags.
[--access <public|restricted>]: Tells the registry whether this package
should be published as public or restricted. Only applies to scoped
packages, which default to restricted. If you don't have a paid
account, you must publish with --access public to publish scoped
packages.
[--otp <otpcode>]: If you have two-factor authentication enabled in
auth-and-writes mode then you can provide a code from your
authenticator with this. If you don't include this and you're running
from a TTY then you'll be prompted.
[--dry-run]: As of npm@6, does everything publish would do except
actually publishing to the registry. Reports the details of what would
have been published.
The publish will fail if the package name and version combination already
exists in the specified registry.
Once a package is published with a given name and version, that specific
name and version combination can never be used again, even if it is removed
with npm unpublish.
As of npm@5, both a sha1sum and an integrity field with a sha512sum of the
tarball will be submitted to the registry during publication. Subsequent
installs will use the strongest supported algorithm to verify downloads.
Similar to --dry-run see npm pack, which figures
out the files to be included and packs them into a tarball to be uploaded
to the registry.
Files included in package
To see what will be included in your package, run npx npm-packlist. All
files are included by default, with the following exceptions:
Certain files that are relevant to package installation and distribution
are always included. For example, package.json, README.md,
LICENSE, and so on.
If there is a "files" list in
package.json, then only the files
specified will be included. (If directories are specified, then they
will be walked recursively and their contents included, subject to the
same ignore rules.)
If there is a .gitignore or .npmignore file, then ignored files in
that and all child directories will be excluded from the package. If
both files exist, then the .gitignore is ignored, and only the
.npmignore is used.
If the file matches certain patterns, then it will never be included,
unless explicitly added to the "files" list in package.json, or
un-ignored with a ! rule in a .npmignore or .gitignore file.
Symbolic links are never included in npm packages.
See developers for full details on what's
included in the published package, as well as details on how the package is
built.