Why are Laravel's package.json dependancies using dev?

This file: https://github.com/laravel/laravel/blob/master/package.json

Why are all the dependancies in devDependencies rather than dependencies?

Are they assuming that you're commiting your compiled assets? Otherwise, when you deploy to production, you still are going to be doing npm install, right?

Should we be commiting compiled assets or no?

tekmi

9 years ago

Level 23

I think it's worth reading this article https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/npm-dependencies-vs-devdependencies-daniel-tonon

Anyway for me it would make more sense to keep only cross-env and laravel-mix as devDependencies. The other packages, which I use inside my project, I would keep under dependencies.

ryanmortier

9 years ago

Level 10

Hmm, that didn't really clear it up?

If you aren't publishing to npm, it technically doesn't matter which flag you use. However, I find it a good practice to use the "--save" flag for modules that affect the source code that you write. Then use the "--save-dev" flag for modules that are required for your compiler to function.

So, looking at Laravel's devDependencies, we see several of them affect the source code we write, for example: Lodash.

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