Simulate npm install of local packages during React Native development.
The React Native toolchain does not support working with symlinks to npm packages that are being developer locally, in another directory. Because of this, doing a simple npm install <path-to-my-local-package> doesn't work, which becomes an issue when developing a package and a project that depends on that package, locally.
Simply copying a local package to the project's node_modules and working from there does not work, because with every npm install, the package is removed from node_modules, since it's not registered in the project's package.json.
What we want, ideally, is to mimic what the end-user will do, when using our new package in their React Native project. Specifically, we want them to run npm install <our_published_package>, and have npm install and register the package properly, as well as have our dependencies placed in the proper areas (either in the node_modules of the project, or in the node_modules of the package).
This is the purpose of this tool.
Given a node package, in development, in /path/to/my/package
and a project, in development, in /path/to/my/project
calling mimic-npm-install.sh /path/to/my/package /path/to/my/project will mimic the behavior of the user calling npm install on the package, from the project, as if the package was published. The package will be registered in the project and installed into the project's node_modules, with all its dependencies downloaded and placed in the correct directories.