Vue - Better to publish .vue file or a compiled component? - node.js

Question

When writing custom components is it better to publish the .vue file directly or to publish a compiled version using webpack/other-bundling-tool ?
Bonus: Is there an official document regarding conventions to follow when publishing custom components?
EDIT: What are the pros and cons of either method?

Answer 1

I've published a few open source projects and from experience I can say that it's better to publish your code - or rather, set the main entry point - as a compiled distributable for a few reasons:
Firstly, by outputting a UMD module you are creating a distributable that works across all environments (webpack, browserify, CDN, AMD) and it's as simple as adding the following to your webpack config:
output: {
...
library: 'MyPackageName',
libraryTarget: 'umd',
umdNamedDefine: true
},
Secondly, most developers using webpack will exclude babel-loader from compiling scripts in their node_modules folder by doing something like:
{
test: /\.js$/,
loader: 'babel-loader',
exclude: /node_modules/
}
So, if developers need to compile your code themselves and you have anything in your project that is not a .vue file that uses ES2015 (e.g. a mixin) then you would need to tell developers to apply babel-loader to your project folder in their webpack config.
As for browserifydevelopers having to compile your project, you would need to add vueify and babelify as transforms to package.json (they actually can't set this up themselves) and tell those developers that those are dependencies and get them to set up an appropriate .babelrc file.
All that setup can be a nightmare for devs, many will have little knowledge about their build process, so won't know about excludes, they won't know about transforms, they will just get a bunch of errors and either remove your package or create issues on your repo.
And that's just for the two most common build processes, you will still probably want a CDN and you will still want to allow those using AMD modules to use your package, so a UMD module is the way to go.
That said, you should still distribute the .vue files themselves, which will also allow devs to compile your project if they have advanced configuration requirements.