In the previous post we looked at using yarn link to work on development of a package whilst using it within our application (or other package).

There’s a problem. This only works if you’ve previously published the package to an npm compatible repository because when you run yarn in your application, it’ll see the dependency of your package and try to get it from the remote repository.

Note: this in not an issue if the package was published it’s only an issue for unpublished packages.

What we can do is change the dependency from using a version number to essentially use a local path. For example, let’s assume we have the following in our packages.json

"dependencies": {
   "@namespace/package-name": "1.0.0"
}

As stated, running yarn will result in and error no such package available. Changing this line to

"dependencies": {
   "@namespace/package-name": "link:../dev/package-name"
}

In other words, link: followed by the path to our package under development, then all will work, running yarn will no longer fail with the no such package available error.

You also needn’t run the link commands on the package or application to create a symbolic link if you use this syntax, just remember to change it back to the version number once the package is published.