For background, see npm#10074.

Detect if we were run as a result of npm publish. This is intended to allow you to easily have prepublish lifecycle scripts that don't run when you run npm install.

$ npm install --save-dev in-publish
[email protected] node_modules/in-publish

Then edit your package.json to have:

  "scripts": {
    "prepublish": "in-publish && thing-I-dont-want-on-dev-install || not-in-publish"
  }

Now when you run:

$ npm install

Then thing-I-dont-want-on-dev-install won't be run, but...

$ npm publish

And thing-I-dont-want-on-dev-install will be run.

It's worth noting that the prepublish lifecycle is ALSO called when you build a tarball, so:

$ npm pack

Will call your prepublish lifecycle, but with the example above, thing-I-dont-want-on-dev-install won't be run.

If you want this, you can use another helper included here:

  "scripts": {
    "prepublish": "not-in-install && thing-I-dont-want-on-dev-install || in-install"
  }

The above will run your thing-I-dont-want-on-dev-install on publish and on pack but not on install.