Should a svelte package be a dependency or a devDependency?

user_8583669 0
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I know that there are already a lot of posts concerning the distinction between dependency and devDependency but I didn't find any that explain it for the case of svelte so lets open this one here.

In most of the svelte package like svelte-material-ui or svelte-routing, the installation guide tell to install the package as a dependency. However since svelte will compile this package during the build time, the new library that will use it doesn't need to install this svelte package. So I don't see why it has to be a dependency.

Maybe this question is opinion based but would be nice to have at least a small idea of what to use.

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2 Answers

I believe this is personal opinion. If you're not distributing your code as an NPM package, the distinction should be minimal. See, for example, this related discussion.

In my experience with web projects, it's helpful to distinguish between dependencies that are used for building/testing (devDependencies) vs. those that are "used at runtime" (dependencies). You're right that, with Svelte, none of the literal code is used at runtime, but then everything would be a devDependency, so you don't get a useful separation.

The NPM documentation says that the distinction should be production vs. development/testing.

user_77976610

In SvelteKit (the next version of Sapper) there is one major difference between dependency and devDependency: any module used in a (server-side) endpoint must be a dependency. If not, the project may not work when deployed on a serverless platform, although it will work locally.

Otherwise, I prefer to keep everything as a devDependency. I think it makes sense because Svelte is a compiler, and the packages are only needed at compile-time. However, I don't think it would hurt to just put everything as a dependency.

user_1170300
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