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I'm really liking yarn. It solves some of my main issues with npm, it's fast and it provides some great output in the CLI. It's also architected absolutely inge

I'm really liking yarn. It solves some of my main issues with npm, it's fast and it provides some great output in the CLI. It's also architected absolutely ingeniously. Seriously they have positioned themselves to seamlessly take over npm's entire business just like that. What do I mean? So today by default yarn goes through its servers which then proxy to npm's. As time goes Facebook can add more features to its own repo (custom submissions instead of to npm or maybe it does a federated publish to both at first, nice looking pages with community engagement tools built in, better metrics (npm provides me with almost worthless metrics), etc). Then when enough people are using Yarn Facebook could simply...flip the switch. Then boom, zero npm usage. I would be terrified if I were NPM right now. They've sat on their hands for years not improving npm. I mean npm3 had a silly CLI animation that made all downloads take orders of magnitude longer simply because of the animation! P.S. if you're trying to use yarn with a custom npm repository just drop a .yarnrc file into your project's directory then add the following in that file: registry "http://<my http://<my register>"

thejameskyle 10y ago
npm should not be terrified, we've been working with them and they've been very encouraging. From their perspective it's very difficult to make breaking changes to the client because of the sheer number of people depending on them. (We've faced similar problems on Babel) Yarn still makes use of the npm registry and all the high quality infrastructure they've built and support they provide for the ecosystem. They are a critical piece of this.
- BinaryIdiot 10y ago
  I mean I understand the intent but it turns npm into basically a dumb pipe / just infrastructure. Every business that gets reduced to that struggles to get out of that space and expand. Granted it's far too early to write npm off. But with how slow they've moved over the years I'm unconvinced that yarn won't take over the space unless it runs into some bad problems. Npm 3 and its launch was an absolute mess and, ultimately, it's almost just a package managing tool. I am unconvinced that breaking changes is much of an issue if at all for them. They could abandon shrinkwrap into a better system and I think everyone would be happy for it; no need to keep propping up that awful system.
tzaman 10y ago
As Yehuda pointed out, such a thing won't happen because Yarn was launched as a community project from the beginning, and a lot of members contribute to both, so even if Facebook decided something sketchy, the community would either stop it from happening or continue with a forked version.
- BinaryIdiot 10y ago
  > the community would either stop it from happening or continue with a forked version Would they, though? If Yarn turns out to be the better tool that doesn't change the way they work (beyond solving some pain points) then would they even care? Facebook could even offload the hosting to some open source group like Apache. It's purely anecdotal but a lot of people I have worked with would love to see an alternative to npm. It's just slow and the features it gives to authors is pretty limited (I want better metrics, please!). I'm not even sure I would call it sketchy, it would just simply be phasing out something deprecated (I'm not talking about a swift take over more like a slowly-boiling-the-frog-in-the-water takeover). It's only my opinion and if Facebook really doesn't want that to happen then I guess it won't but it's pretty easy to imagine it, IMO.
softawre 10y ago
on .yarnrc - anybody figured out how to get it to pull from a private git repo?
eknkc 10y ago
NPM makes money from the registry and if Yarn keeps using it though, this benefits them a lot. Let's see what happens.
deleted 10y ago
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thejameskyle 10y ago

npm should not be terrified, we've been working with them and they've been very encouraging. From their perspective it's very difficult to make breaking changes to the client because of the sheer number of people depending on them. (We've faced similar problems on Babel) Yarn still makes use of the npm registry and all the high quality infrastructure they've built and support they provide for the ecosystem. They are a critical piece of this.

BinaryIdiot 10y ago
I mean I understand the intent but it turns npm into basically a dumb pipe / just infrastructure. Every business that gets reduced to that struggles to get out of that space and expand. Granted it's far too early to write npm off. But with how slow they've moved over the years I'm unconvinced that yarn won't take over the space unless it runs into some bad problems. Npm 3 and its launch was an absolute mess and, ultimately, it's almost just a package managing tool. I am unconvinced that breaking changes is much of an issue if at all for them. They could abandon shrinkwrap into a better system and I think everyone would be happy for it; no need to keep propping up that awful system.

tzaman 10y ago

As Yehuda pointed out, such a thing won't happen because Yarn was launched as a community project from the beginning, and a lot of members contribute to both, so even if Facebook decided something sketchy, the community would either stop it from happening or continue with a forked version.

BinaryIdiot 10y ago
> the community would either stop it from happening or continue with a forked version Would they, though? If Yarn turns out to be the better tool that doesn't change the way they work (beyond solving some pain points) then would they even care? Facebook could even offload the hosting to some open source group like Apache. It's purely anecdotal but a lot of people I have worked with would love to see an alternative to npm. It's just slow and the features it gives to authors is pretty limited (I want better metrics, please!). I'm not even sure I would call it sketchy, it would just simply be phasing out something deprecated (I'm not talking about a swift take over more like a slowly-boiling-the-frog-in-the-water takeover). It's only my opinion and if Facebook really doesn't want that to happen then I guess it won't but it's pretty easy to imagine it, IMO.

softawre 10y ago

on .yarnrc - anybody figured out how to get it to pull from a private git repo?

eknkc 10y ago

NPM makes money from the registry and if Yarn keeps using it though, this benefits them a lot. Let's see what happens.

deleted 10y ago

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