Create GitHub repository#

GitHub has a generous free plan which allows us to create private repositories, run a CI/CD environment, and host private NPM packages. The first step for our new component library is to create a private GitHub repository.

Repository details:

• Owner

  • Use your GitHub username

  • If your company uses GitHub you may create this package under their organization when creating a component library for production

• Name

  • Use component-library

• Permissions

  • Make sure the repository is listed as PRIVATE

• README / .gitignore

  • Provide a default README as well as the Node .gitignore template

Clone repository#

Once the repository is created, let's clone it to our machine.

# Navigate to where you want to store the repository

cd ~/Courses

# Use the HTTPS or SSH values provided by GitHub

git clone COPY_FROM_GITHUB

When the repository is finished cloning, open it in your editor of choice. You should see the README and .gitignore we defined in the previous step.

Initialize the package#

To help the initial package creation we will use the npm-init command.

# Navigate to our component library

cd ~/Courses/component-library

# Initialize our package with all default values

npm init --force

You will see a new package.json with its values pre-populated to match our repository. Let's update the name of the package to include our GitHub account as a scope: