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pi-mistral-native

Trial

0009. Ship built dist as the tarball surface

Trial

  • Status: Trial
  • Date: 2026-10-31

Context

Section titled “Context”

The npm packaging and the pi package manifest have to settle what the published tarball ships and what the pi manifest points at. A manifest that declared pi.extensions: ["extensions/*.ts"] while files excluded extensions/ entirely — the published package would have loaded nothing. Two minimal-surface options existed: ship the TypeScript sources (extensions/ in files, manifest unchanged) or ship the compiled output (dist/extensions in files, manifest pointing at dist/extensions/*.js). pi resolves both: the pi manifest supports globs relative to the package root, and pi transpiles TypeScript entry files directly.

Decision

Section titled “Decision”

Ship the compiled output: files: ["dist/extensions", "README.md", "LICENSE"], pi.extensions: ["dist/extensions/*.js"], and a prepack script (npm run build) so the tarball can never ship stale or missing dist/ output.

  • The published artifact is identical to the artifact npm test verified; it does not depend on pi’s TypeScript transpilation in foreign installs.
  • files names dist/extensions, not dist, so the compiled test suite (dist/test/*.test.js) stays out of the tarball; npm nullifies .gitignore for packed paths when files is present, so the git-ignored dist/ still ships.
  • exports stays absent: pi resolves the package via the pi manifest, not Node module resolution; main remains a conventional pointer.
  • Development against the TypeScript sources keeps working without a build via the single-file entry point (pi -e extensions/mistral.ts).

Known trade-off accepted: in a fresh local checkout, pi install/pi -e against the package root silently loads no extension until npm run build has produced dist/ (the manifest glob matches no file). This is documented in the README and docs/dev/publishing.md.

Consequences

Section titled “Consequences”
  • Easier: one runtime artifact (the tested build); no transpiler version drift between local checkout and published package; smaller review surface for the tarball contents.
  • Harder: local package-root installs (pi install ./pi-mistral-native) require npm run build first, and fail silently when it is skipped.
  • Known risk accepted: the manifest no longer exercises pi’s TypeScript entry loading in the published flow; that path remains covered by the development flow above.