Consolidating commands with npm scripts

It's troublesome to have to type rm -rf dist/ && npx babel src -d dist each time you want to build your project. Instead, we should use npm scripts to consolidate this command into a simpler one.

In your package.json file, add a new build sub-property to the scripts property, and set it to a string representing the command we want to run:

"scripts": {
 "build": "rm -rf dist/ && babel src -d dist",
 "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
}

Now, instead of typing  rm -rf dist/ && npx babel src -d dist, you can just type yarn run build, or npm run build—much less cumbersome! By adding this script into package.json, it allows you to share this with other developers, so everyone can benefit from this convenience.

We can also create a serve script, which will build our application and then run it:

"scripts": {
  "build": "rm -rf dist/ && babel src -d dist",
  "serve": "yarn run build && node dist/index.js",
  "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
}

When we integrate with testing frameworks and documentation tools in subsequent chapters, we will add even more scripts here.