Further work on fix for #235 (solving additional problem that 'npm publish' is hardcoded to exclude node_modules dirs)

.gitignore

@@ -34,13 +34,6 @@ npm-debug.log
 # files with that name (https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/1862). So, each template instead has a template_gitignore
 # file which gets renamed after the files are copied. And so any files that need to be excluded in the source
 # repo have to be excluded here.
-
-# Note that we need to exclude node_modules/** (i.e., subdirs, not the whole of node_modules) because we do need to
-# include the _placeholder.txt files, and can't do that using gitignore exclusion because developers aren't promoted to
-# commit files included that way. This is all a workaround for Workaround for https://github.com/aspnet/JavaScriptServices/issues/235
-/templates/*/node_modules/**
+/templates/*/node_modules/
 /templates/*/wwwroot/dist/
 .vscode/
-
-# Workaround for https://github.com/aspnet/JavaScriptServices/issues/235
-!/templates/*/node_modules/_placeholder.txt

templates/package-builder/src/build/build.ts

@@ -110,7 +110,11 @@ function buildDotNetNewNuGetPackage() {
     const projectGuid = '00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000';
     const filenameReplacements = [
         { from: /.*\.xproj$/, to: `${sourceProjectName}.xproj` },
-        { from: /\btemplate_gitignore$/, to: '.gitignore' }
+        { from: /\btemplate_gitignore$/, to: '.gitignore' },
+
+        // Workaround for https://github.com/aspnet/JavaScriptServices/issues/235
+        // For details, see the comment in ../yeoman/app/index.ts
+        { from: /\btemplate_nodemodules_placeholder.txt$/, to: 'node_modules/_placeholder.txt' }
     ];
     const contentReplacements = [
         { from: /<ProjectGuid>[0-9a-f\-]{36}<\/ProjectGuid>/g, to: `<ProjectGuid>${projectGuid}</ProjectGuid>` },

templates/package-builder/src/yeoman/app/index.ts

@@ -52,6 +52,18 @@ class MyGenerator extends yeoman.Base {
                 outputFn = path.join(path.dirname(fn), '.gitignore');
             }
 
+            // Likewise, output template_nodemodules_placeholder.txt as node_modules/_placeholder.txt
+            // This is a workaround for https://github.com/aspnet/JavaScriptServices/issues/235. We need the new project
+            // to have a nonempty node_modules dir as far as *source control* is concerned. So, there's a gitignore
+            // rule that explicitly causes node_modules/_placeholder.txt to be tracked in source control. But how
+            // does that file get there in the first place? It's not enough for such a file to exist when the
+            // generator-aspnetcore-spa NPM package is published, because NPM doesn't allow any directories called
+            // node_modules to exist in the package. So we have a file with at a different location, and move it
+            // to node_modules as part of executing the template.
+            if (path.basename(fn) === 'template_nodemodules_placeholder.txt') {
+                outputFn = path.join(path.dirname(fn), 'node_modules', '_placeholder.txt');
+            }
+
             this.fs.copyTpl(
                 path.join(templateRoot, fn),
                 this.destinationPath(outputFn),

templates/package-builder/src/yeoman/package.json

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 {
   "name": "generator-aspnetcore-spa",
-  "version": "0.2.5",
+  "version": "0.2.6",
   "description": "Single-Page App templates for ASP.NET Core",
   "author": "Microsoft",
   "license": "Apache-2.0",