clean-pkg-json

Only publish necessary package.json properties.

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Example

Given a package.json with dev configs, scripts, and devDependencies:

{
    "name": "my-package",
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "description": "A useful package",
    "type": "module",
    "main": "dist/index.js",
    "types": "dist/index.d.ts",
    "files": [
        "dist"
    ],
    "scripts": {
        "build": "pkgroll",
        "lint": "eslint .",
        "test": "vitest",
        "prepack": "clean-pkg-json"
    },
    "dependencies": {
        "lodash": "^4.0.0"
    },
    "devDependencies": {
        "pkgroll": "^2.0.0",
        "vitest": "^1.0.0",
        "clean-pkg-json": "^1.0.0"
    },
    "eslintConfig": {
        "extends": [
            "@pvtnbr"
        ]
    },
    "lint-staged": {
        "*.ts": "eslint --fix"
    },
    "simple-git-hooks": {
        "pre-commit": "npx lint-staged"
    }
}

Running clean-pkg-json produces:

{
    "name": "my-package",
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "description": "A useful package",
    "type": "module",
    "main": "dist/index.js",
    "types": "dist/index.d.ts",
    "files": [
        "dist"
    ],
    "dependencies": {
        "lodash": "^4.0.0"
    }
}

How it works

Uses an allowlist to preserve only properties relevant to package consumers, everything else is removed.

For scripts, only install hooks (preinstall, install, postinstall, dependencies) are preserved. All other scripts are removed.

For exports and imports, entries referencing files not included in the published package are pruned. This prevents consumers from resolving to non-existent source files. Conditional entries are partially pruned — only unpublished branches are removed. Pass --published-only=false to disable this behavior.

If an entry is removed because its target file doesn't exist on disk, a warning is printed. This usually means clean-pkg-json ran before the build.

Install

npm install -D clean-pkg-json

Setup

Add clean-pkg-json to the prepack script, which runs before npm publish and npm pack:

// package.json
{
    "scripts": {
        "prepack": "clean-pkg-json",
    },
}

When invoked via npm pack --dry-run or npm publish --dry-run, clean-pkg-json auto-detects npm's dry-run mode (via the npm_config_dry_run env var) and skips writing to disk.

Flags

Default preserved properties

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