Plugin update won't work with locally developed plugin

[roncsak]

Hello,

Description

I created a tns app with tns create MyTnsApp --tsc and a plugin (with nativescript-plugin-seed) for it and put it to the plugins folder.

Here is the directory tree:

├── app
│   ├── package.json
│   └── <other files>
├── hooks
│   └── < ... >
├── node_modules
│   └── < ... >
├── package.json
├── platforms
│   └── < ... >
└── plugins
    └── nativescript-myplugin
        └── src
            ├── package.json
            └── < ... >

I can successfully add the plugin via: tns plugin add plugins/nativescript-myplugin/src/

I can successfully remove the plugin via: tns plugin remove nativescript-myplugin

The problem

Using tns plugin update nativescript-myplugin removes the plugin I want but it tries to get the source from https://registry.npmjs.org/nativescript-myplugin which drops a 404 error, of course.
So, the install fails.

Using tns plugin update plugins/nativescript-myplugin/src/ says "Plugin "plugins/nativescript-myplugin/src/" is not installed."

The expectation

I would like to update my plugin even if I develop it locally.
Either giving the path of the plugin or the name of it,update should work without a problem.

[NickIliev]

@roncsak thanks for the report - we will investigate the issue and post any related information here.

Meanwhile, as a suggestion, you could use npm link to link the source code of the plugin in development and instantly receive the changes in the linked application while working on the plugin.

For example:

cd plugins/nativescript-myplugin/src
tsc
npm link
cd <path-to-project-folder>
npm link nativescript-myplugin

Or if using NPM 5 and above just do npm install (no explicit links needed) - informationabout linking can be found in this article

[ludcila]

I have a more or less related issue. I too have a main app project and a plugin project with the plugin seed. I am trying to add the plugin to the main project using "tns plugin add [github repo]" but it complains about missing a package.json file, which I suspect is because the actual plugin code is inside the src directory, not in the root. I have also tried putting the repo link in the package.json and doing an npm install, but got the same result.

@NickIliev's suggestion of using npm link will do for now, but I would really prefer to point the dependency to a github repo. What would be the right way to do that?