You can create and publish new libraries to extend Angular functionality. If you find that you need to solve the same problem in more than one app (or want to share your solution with other developers), you have a candidate for a library.
Notice that the configured builder for the project is different from the default builder for app projects.
This builder, among other things, ensures that the library is always built with the [AoT compiler](guide/aot-compiler), without the need to specify the `--prod` flag.
To make library code reusable you must define a public API for it. This "user layer" defines what is available to consumers of your library. A user of your library should be able to access public functionality (such as NgModules, service providers and general utility functions) through a single import path.
* Declarations such as components and pipes should be designed as stateless, meaning they don’t rely on or alter external variables. If you do rely on state, you need to evaluate every case and decide whether it is application state or state that the library would manage.
* Services should declare their own providers (rather than declaring providers in the NgModule or a component), so that they are *tree-shakable*. This allows the compiler to leave the service out of the bundle if it never gets injected into the application that imports the library. For more about this, see [Tree-shakable providers](guide/dependency-injection-providers#tree-shakable-providers).
* If you register global service providers or share providers across multiple NgModules, use the [`forRoot()` and `forChild()` patterns](guide/singleton-services) provided by the [RouterModule](api/router/RouterModule).
* For custom classes or interfaces used in components or service, check whether they depend on additional classes or interfaces that also need to be migrated.
* If your library code or its templates depend on other libraries (such a Angular Material, for instance), you must configure your library with those dependencies.
A library typically includes *reusable code* that defines components, services, and other Angular artifacts (pipes, directives, and so on) that you simply import into a project.
A library is packaged into an npm package for publishing and sharing, and this package can also include [schematics](guide/glossary#schematic) that provide instructions for generating or transforming code directly in your project, in the same way that the CLI creates a generic skeleton app with `ng generate component`.
A schematic that is combined with a library can, for example, provide the Angular CLI with the information it needs to generate a particular component defined in that library.
Suppose you want to read a configuration file and then generate a form based on that configuration.
If that form will need additional customization by the user, it might work best as a schematic.
However, if the forms will always be the same and not need much customization by developers, then you could create a dynamic component that takes the configuration and generates the form.
In general, the more complex the customization, the more useful the schematic approach.
* Include generation schematics in your library so that `ng generate` can scaffold your defined artifacts (components, services, tests, and so on) in a project.
If you've never published a package in npm before, you must create a user account. Read more in [Publishing npm Packages](https://docs.npmjs.com/getting-started/publishing-npm-packages).
When linking a library, make sure that the build step runs in watch mode, and that the library's `package.json` configuration points at the correct entry points.
For example, `main` should point at a JavaScript file, not a TypeScript file.
Angular libraries should list all `@angular/*` dependencies as peer dependencies.
This insures that when modules ask for Angular, they all get the exact same module.
If a library lists `@angular/core` in `dependencies` instead of `peerDependencies`, it might get a different Angular module instead, which would cause your application to break.
To get around this problem you can use TypeScript path mapping to tell TypeScript that it should load some modules from a specific location.
List all the peer dependencies that your library uses in the TypeScript configuration file `./tsconfig.json`, and point them at the local copy in the app's `node_modules` folder.
The build step is important if you haven't published your library as an npm package and then installed the package back into your app from npm.
For instance, if you clone your git repository and run `npm install`, your editor will show the `my-lib` imports as missing if you haven't yet built your library.
When you import something from a library in an Angular app, Angular looks for a mapping between the library name and a location on disk.
When you install a library package, the mapping is in the `node_modules` folder. When you build your own library, it has to find the mapping in your `tsconfig` paths.
Incremental builds can be run as a backround process in your dev environment. To take advantage of this feature add the `--watch` flag to the build command: