Publishing

Atom bundles a command line utility called apm which we first used back in Command Line to search for and install packages via the command line. The apm command can also be used to publish Atom packages to the public registry and update them.

Prepare Your Package

There are a few things you should double check before publishing:

• Your package.json file has name, description, and repository fields.
• Your package.json file has a version field with a value of "0.0.0".
• Your package.json file has an engines field that contains an entry for Atom such as: "engines": {"atom": ">=1.0.0 <2.0.0"}.
• Your package has a README.md file at the root.
• Your repository URL in the package.json file is the same as the URL of your repository.
• Your package is in a Git repository that has been pushed to GitHub. Follow this guide if your package isn't already on GitHub.

Publish Your Package

Before you publish a package it is a good idea to check ahead of time if a package with the same name has already been published to the atom.io package registry. You can do that by visiting https://atom.io/packages/your-package-name to see if the package already exists. If it does, update your package's name to something that is available before proceeding.

Now let's review what the apm publish command does:

1. Registers the package name on atom.io if it is being published for the first time.
2. Updates the version field in the package.json file and commits it.
3. Creates a new Git tag for the version being published.
4. Pushes the tag and current branch up to GitHub.
5. Updates atom.io with the new version being published.

Now run the following commands to publish your package:

$ cd path-to-your-package
$ apm publish minor

If this is the first package you are publishing, the apm publish command may prompt you for your GitHub username and password. If you have two-factor authentication enabled, use a personal access token in lieu of a password. This is required to publish and you only need to enter this information the first time you publish. The credentials are stored securely in your keychain once you login.

Your package is now published and available on atom.io. Head on over to https://atom.io/packages/your-package-name to see your package's page.

With apm publish, you can bump the version and publish by using

$ apm publish <em>version-type</em>

where version-type can be major, minor and patch.

The major option to the publish command tells apm to increment the first number of the version before publishing so the published version will be 1.0.0 and the Git tag created will be v1.0.0.

The minor option to the publish command tells apm to increment the second number of the version before publishing so the published version will be 0.1.0 and the Git tag created will be v0.1.0.

The patch option to the publish command tells apm to increment the third number of the version before publishing so the published version will be 0.0.1 and the Git tag created will be v0.0.1.

Use major when you make a change that breaks backwards compatibility, like changing defaults or removing features. Use minor when adding new functionality or options, but without breaking backwards compatibility. Use patch when you've changed the implementation of existing features, but without changing the behaviour or options of your package. Check out semantic versioning to learn more about best practices for versioning your package releases.

You can also run apm help publish to see all the available options and apm help to see all the other available commands.