Building module packages

Before you can upload and publish your module to the Forge, build an uploadable module package.

The pdk build command performs a series of checks on your module and builds a tar.gz package so that you can upload your module to the Forge. To learn more about publishing your module to the Forge, see the documentation about publishing your module. 

When you run the pdk build command, PDK checks your module metadata, looks for any symlinks, and excludes from the package any files listed in the .gitignore or .pdkignore files. If PDK finds any issues with metadata or symlinks, it prompts you to fix these issues.

By default, the .pdkignore file contains a list of commonly ignored files, such as temporary files. This file is located in the module's main directory. To add or remove files to this list, define them in the module's .sync.yml file and run pdk update on your module.

PDK prompts you for confirmation before building the package. It writes module packages to the module's pkg directory, but you can specify a different directory if you prefer. PDK names module packages with the convention forgeusername-modulename-version.tar.gz.