Test that your NPM prepare scripts are working properly as a part of GitLab CI

build-npm-packaging-tester.sh

#!/bin/bash
#
# This script is for testing coffeescript (or other transpiled npm packages) on GitLab
# 
# Designed to be put in a subdirectory of the repo under test, it generates a package.json and index.js 
# for a dummy test project -- it will check that whatever project is in the parent directory (i.e. the 
# root of your repo where package.json is) can properly prepare itself for installation when specified
# as a git:// dependency
# 
# To do this, it literally specifies your package under test as a git:// dependency -- 
# the ONLY non-semver dependency option that appears to trigger an `npm prepare` action to fire.  It 
# does this using the same git checkout info that the CI machine would use to get the repo.
#
# It's possible that this script could be adapted for GitHub (e.g. Travis CI or some such) but I'm 
# not certain what the checkout token would be nor what the environment variables would be.
#
# The relevant addition to your .gitlab-ci.yml would be: 
# - rm -rf lib/*  # destroy any previously-compiled stuff in lib (if that's where you compiled to)
# - cd whatever_directory_you_put_this_script_in
# - bash build-npm-packaging-tester.sh
# - npm install
# - npm test
#

NPM_PACKAGE=$(cat ../package.json  | grep -Eow "\"name\":\s+\"[^\"]*\"" | cut -d "\"" -f 4)

cat > package.json <<JSON
{
  "name": "coffeescript_packaging_test",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "Tests that $NPM_PACKAGE successfully prepares itself when installed from a repository URL",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "node index.js"
  },
  "author": "Ian Katz",
  "license": "Apache-2.0",
  "repository": {
    "type": "git",
    "url": "../"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "$NPM_PACKAGE": "git+$CI_REPOSITORY_URL#$CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME"
  }
}
JSON

cat > index.js <<JAVASCRIPT
require('$NPM_PACKAGE');
JAVASCRIPT