The missing tool to clean up the package.json file before publishing.

# Install package-ignore as a devDependency,
# available as command `npx pi`
npm i -D package-ignore

• npx pi clean - Clean the package.json file based on .package-ignore patterns
• npx pi clean --dry-run - Preview what would be cleaned without making changes
• npx pi restore - Restore the package.json from backup
• npx pi --help - Show help information

Package ignore (pi) is not opinionated about your release workflow. It simply provides a way to clean up and restore the package.json file.

The npx pi clean command will look for the package.json file in the current directory. Additionally, it will resolve the .package-ignore file (see Syntax), starting in the current directory, walking up the directory tree. If no .package-ignore file is found, the default pattern devDependencies will be used. A backup file package-ignore-backup.json will be created in the current directory. Use npx pi restore to restore the package.json from backup.

Example for a simple integration with npm publish:

{
 "scripts": {
 "prepack": "pi clean",
 "postpack": "pi restore"
 }
}

Here, the tarball will contain the cleaned up package.json file. The scripts prepack and postpack will be triggered by npm pack and npm publish, respectively.

The .package-ignore file is a simple text file that contains a list of definitions. Each non-empty line (modulo comments) is a definition.

• All content after a (unescaped) hash # is ignored.

• A dot . separates JSON keys in a line.
• A line consisting of only * ignores the whole package.json content.
• A line starting with an exclamation mark ! defines an allowed JSON path and may override (a part of) an ignored JSON path.

• A backslash \ is used to escape characters, including itself.
• The dot . and the hash # need to be escaped if they are part of a key name.
• If the package.json has a top-level key * or a top-level key starting with !, those first characters must be escaped.
• Escaping other key name characters has no effect.

• Technically, leading and trailing whitespace are also allowed in JSON key names; however, whitespace is trimmed by the parser for definitions and key names.

The allowlist pattern (strict):

* # '*' ignores all package.json content except...
!scripts.build:examples # ...those patterns prefixed with '!'
# Will result in a package.json with the following content:
# {
# "scripts": {
# "build:examples": "..."
# }
# }

The ignore pattern (open):

devDependencies # This will ignore the "devDependencies" key
scripts.build # This will ignore the "build" script
!files # Keeping the "files" key is important for creating the tarball