How to manage requireJS based packages for Node.js applications

Since coming across RequireJS I have started to adopt it wholeheartedly as it seems a great way of organising dependencies etc.

For my current project I have created a 'package' of requireJS-organised modules, which will provide the needed database API, to many node.js applications.

But I have come across a stumbling block ... how can I allow third party applications to use my package, without needing to faff with requireJS?

My directory structure for my applications and API is currently as follows:

api_package/node_modules
api_package/controllers/*
api_package/views/*
api_package/helpers/*
api_package/models/*
api_package/main.js

application_1/node_modules
application_1/app.js

application_2/node_modules
application_2/app.js

I need my applications to be self-contained - so they can be easily deployed - so my current work around is to copy api_package/* into the 'node_modules' directory of application_1 & 2 and setting the their requirejs config to the following:

(function() {
  var requirejs;

  requirejs = require('requirejs').config({
    baseUrl: __dirname,
    nodeRequire: require,
    packages: [
      {
        name: 'api_package',
        location: './node_modules/api_package'
      }
    ]
  });

This feels a little dirty and wrong!

Is there a better way? Am I missing some packaging feature for requireJS?

Is it even possible to hide the implementation details of my api_package (the detail being that I am using requireJS) and allow applications to use it as they would any other module:

require('api_package')