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Packages Types

Vulcan uses a package-based architecture, meaning that the entirety of its codebase resides in packages.

Package Types​

Vulcan makes use of many different packages types, so it might be a good idea to get them straight before we move on.

NPM Packages​

These are listed in your package.json file, and they are generic Node JavaScript packages that don't contain any Vulcan-specific code.

Example: react

Meteor Core Packages​

In addition to NPM, Meteor also features its own package management system used in parallel. Meteor Core Packages are the packages that make up the Meteor framework itself.

Example: meteor-base

Meteor Remote Packages​

Meteor can also load packages from its package server. Remote packages must always follow the username:package naming convention.

Example: aldeed:collection2-core

Meteor Local Packages​

Finally, Meteor can also load packages from the local file system. These packages can be named whatever you want, and don't need to follow the username:package convention.

Example: example-movies, vulcan:forms

Note that if both a local and remote Meteor package use the same name, Meteor will use the local copy.

Vulcan Packages​

Different Vulcan packages can play different roles. So here's a quick overview of the different Vulcan package categories you'll come across.

Core Packages​

The vulcan:core package contains the heart of Vulcan, and itself depends on a set of core packages:

vulcan:lib
vulcan:routing
vulcan:users

Note that since vulcan:core already includes these dependencies, you only need to make your own package depend on vulcan:core.

Features Packages​

These optional packages provide additional features for your Vulcan app.

vulcan:accounts
vulcan:forms
vulcan:email
vulcan:events

Forum Packages​

Because Vulcan started its life as Telescope, a Hacker News-like forum app, it still includes quite a few packages that are made specifically to help you build a forum-type community app (enabled through the example-forum package). 

vulcan:posts
vulcan:comments
vulcan:newsletter
vulcan:notifications
vulcan:getting-started
vulcan:categories
vulcan:voting
vulcan:embedly
vulcan:api
vulcan:rss
vulcan:subscribe

Language Packages​

These contain the language strings used throughout Vulcan (for the app core, features packages, and forum packages). You need at least one of them enabled. 

vulcan:i18n-en-us

Accounts Package​

Accounts package contain the back-end authentication logic used by Meteor's account system. You need at least one of them enabled.

accounts-password@1.3.4
# accounts-twitter
# accounts-facebook

Custom Packages​

Any other package that contains your own logic.

Out of the box, four example custom packages are provided:

  • example-movies contains a bare-bones forms and data loading example.
  • example-instagram goes a little bit further with a simple Instagram clone.
  • example-forum includes the original Telescope forum app.
  • example-customization shows how to customize and extend the forum example packages without having to modify their code directly. 
example-movies
# example-movies-full
# example-forum
# example-customization

Controlling Dependencies​

Generally speaking, there are two ways a package can be added to your codebase. It can be a top-level dependency, or one of your packages can itself depend on it.

For example, the example-movies package depends on vulcan:core, so adding example-movies will automatically add vulcan:core as well. This is why vulcan:core is not listed in your .meteor/packages file.

But although example-movies can use the English text strings stored in vulcan:i18n-en-us, it doesn't depend on it. This means you can (for example) swap out vulcan:i18n-en-us for vulcan:i18n-fr-fr in .meteor/packages to get French strings.

A complete list of all Meteor packages currently loaded is stored in the .meteor/versions file.

Note that Meteor packages may be added even if they are not located within the Vulcan root directory, by setting the METEOR_PACKAGE_DIRS environment variable. For example, the following commands will allow you to modify your .profile file to add any package located in the packages subdirectory of your home directory:

cat >> $HOME/.profile
export METEOR_PACKAGE_DIRS=$HOME/packages