Testing changes across multiple packages

[scheler]

I'm not so familiar with the development methodologies in the world of node and modern javascript, so a newbie question here.

Why is the opentelemetry-js code organized in so many packages when tree-shaking can eliminate the code not used? Or is it that the tree-shaking functionality in package bundlers not very stable? I'm trying to test the functionality in opentelemetry-web for this PR where the changes are across 3 different packages and it has been hard for me - I have tried both using npm link and publishing packages to a local verdaccio registry - while both work they are sometimes confusing and tedious. I am wondering what method people follow for their testing locally during development.

[legendecas]

You should be able to use lerna to manage local dependencies in the repository. Typically a npm install in the repository root would run the lerna bootstrap as part of the installation, and links packages in the repo. Checkout https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-js/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#development for more details.

Tree-shaking is not available with the common-js outputs for Node.js users. So we'll have to split packages and compose them with different use-cases.

[scheler]

@legendecas Thank you for the response. I had tried out those instructions earlier but they did not work for me. I now remember did not compile the individual packages and hence npm start in examples/opentelemetry-web did not work, so I had to resort to local npm install and npm link for testing. This time all the steps worked me. I am not familiar with the modern JS tools, so thank you for your patience with these queries.

[legendecas]

NP, please feel free to submit an issue if you encounter any problems with the tooling.