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I take it to mean that with npm there is a very low barrier for entry. I mean it's not difficult to actually host an apt repo on your own server or on S3, but t

I take it to mean that with npm there is a very low barrier for entry. I mean it's not difficult to actually host an apt repo on your own server or on S3, but there's still more you need to know to get to that stage. I personally think that using something like apt for Node.js dependencies is a very good idea. I work with Node at work and on the side, and my/our usual stack is either Debian or Ubuntu. Even when Docker gets involved it's usually a Debian or Debian based image. [Edit: phrasing]

kostarelo 7y ago
I am trying to understand why we make NPM such a big deal (and suddenly have all these projects born to solve the NPM problem) when people have solve the issue of a package repository already. C j Silverio's point (JSConf's talk [1]) was that is NPM's scale that makes it hard. Refs: 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO8hZlgK5zc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO8hZlgK5zc
- steveklabnik 7y ago
  To put some perspective on this, comparing Debian to npm: Number of packages: Debian has 172,000 packages for the most popular architecture, amd64. i386 has 24,000 packages. The rest have less than 500 each. npm recently broke a million packages. Download counts: I couldn't find numbers for Debian. npm served 11.2 billion downloads last week. (Debian numbers retrieved by https://popcon.debian.org/ https://popcon.debian.org/, npm numbers from https://medium.com/npm-inc/npm-weekly-200-dont-miss-today-s-tech-talk-1-million-packages-plus-learn-how-npm-s-security-f75f9882aebe https://medium.com/npm-inc/npm-weekly-200-dont-miss-today-s-... and https://api.npmjs.org/downloads/point/last-week https://api.npmjs.org/downloads/point/last-week
  - ricardobeat 7y ago
    Partially self-inflicted since a normal JS project will redownload the same packages over and over again, hundreds of times throughout their existence.
  - regularfry 7y ago
    Debian also has a repository model which allows the packages to be served by a static file server, because the dependency resolution is entirely client-side. Npm doesn't.
    - steveklabnik 7y ago
      Hm, as far as I know, resolution is also entirely client-side for npm. Do you have any links about this?

kostarelo 7y ago

I am trying to understand why we make NPM such a big deal (and suddenly have all these projects born to solve the NPM problem) when people have solve the issue of a package repository already. C j Silverio's point (JSConf's talk [1]) was that is NPM's scale that makes it hard. Refs: 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO8hZlgK5zc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO8hZlgK5zc

steveklabnik 7y ago
To put some perspective on this, comparing Debian to npm: Number of packages: Debian has 172,000 packages for the most popular architecture, amd64. i386 has 24,000 packages. The rest have less than 500 each. npm recently broke a million packages. Download counts: I couldn't find numbers for Debian. npm served 11.2 billion downloads last week. (Debian numbers retrieved by https://popcon.debian.org/ https://popcon.debian.org/, npm numbers from https://medium.com/npm-inc/npm-weekly-200-dont-miss-today-s-tech-talk-1-million-packages-plus-learn-how-npm-s-security-f75f9882aebe https://medium.com/npm-inc/npm-weekly-200-dont-miss-today-s-... and https://api.npmjs.org/downloads/point/last-week https://api.npmjs.org/downloads/point/last-week
- ricardobeat 7y ago
  Partially self-inflicted since a normal JS project will redownload the same packages over and over again, hundreds of times throughout their existence.
- regularfry 7y ago
  Debian also has a repository model which allows the packages to be served by a static file server, because the dependency resolution is entirely client-side. Npm doesn't.
  - steveklabnik 7y ago
    Hm, as far as I know, resolution is also entirely client-side for npm. Do you have any links about this?