5. Using NPM Packages

If you want to use NPM Packages in your plugin, you have 3 Options here

1 - You can push the NPM packages to your Plugin Repository; this has the advantage that the Plugin works right out of the box, however it can cause issues sometimes and increases download time.

2 - (Recommended) You can use a script in your plugin to Install NPM Packages at Runtime; This has the advantage that the size of your Plugin stays small and your Repository looks cleaner. An example script for that would look like this

//Top of index.js

const { existsSync } = require("fs");
const { exec } = require("child_process");
const nodeModulesPath = join(__dirname,"node_modules");

async function installDeps() {
  return new Promise((res) => {
    exec("npm install", { cwd: __dirname }, (err, stdout, stderr) => {
      if (err) {
        res();
      }
      res();
    })
  })
}

if (!existsSync(nodeModulesPath)) {
  installDeps().then(() => {
    setTimeout(() => {
      powercord.pluginManager.remount(__dirname);
    }, 1000)
  })
}

//Actual start of the plugin
[...]

3 - Tell users to Manuallly run "npm i" inside the plugins Folder.