speculate

speculate

Automatically generates an RPM Spec file for your Node.js project

Installation

npm install --global speculate

Features

• Generates an RPM Spec file for your project
• Creates a systemd service definition file
• Supports configuration using your existing package.json
• Currently supports CentOS 7

Usage

Let's start with a simple Node.js project:

my-cool-api
├── package.json
└── server.js

0 directories, 2 files

First run npm install to install your dependencies:

npm install

This creates the node_modules directory:

my-cool-api
├── node_modules
├── package.json
└── server.js

1 directory, 2 files

Run the speculate command from inside the project directory:

speculate

You've now got an RPM Spec file and a systemd service definition for your project. You'll also notice that your application has been packaged into a tar.gz archive, ready to be built with an RPM building tool like rpmbuild or mock:

my-cool-api
├── SOURCES
│   └── my-cool-api.tar.gz
├── SPECS
│   └── my-cool-api.spec
├── node_modules
├── my-cool-api.service
├── package.json
└── server.js

3 directories, 5 files

Speculate is designed to be used at build time, just before you package your application into an RPM. Because of this, we recommend adding the generated files to your .gitignore file:

*.service
SOURCES
SPECS

Directory Structure

Speculate creates the following directories for your application:

Directory	Purpose
/usr/lib/:projectName	This is where your application is stored
/var/log/:projectName	This is created for any log files that your application needs to write to

Configuration

Speculate is configured using the spec property inside your existing package.json file.

Dependencies

To add a dependency to the generated spec file, list the package dependencies in the requires array:

{
  "spec": {
    "requires": [
      "vim",
      "screen"
    ]
  }
}

Executables

If you have scripts that need to be executable when they're installed on your target server, add them to the executable array. You can list both files and entire directories:

{
  "spec": {
    "executable": [
      "./other-scripts/my-script.js",
      "./scripts"
    ]
  }
}

Post Install Actions

If you need to perform any actions after installing your package (such as moving files on the target server) you can specify these inline using the post property:

{
  "spec": {
    "post": [
      "mv /usr/lib/my-cool-api/rc.local /etc/rc.local"
    ]
  }
}

Release Number

By default speculate will set the RPM release number to 1, if you want to override this you can do so by using the --release flag:

speculate --release=7