there's no npm install and there's no etc. All the files needed to run a node application are in node_modules. If node is on the container, you can just rsync

there's no npm install and there's no etc. All the files needed to run a node application are in node_modules. If node is on the container, you can just rsync the scripts. I think you're comparing distributing stand alone binaries, vs distributing the source code for a node app, and then installing its dependencies, and maybe doing some transpiling. That's not a fair comparison.