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The people in that Debian thread[1] completely misunderstand how Node packages work - the 'jshint' dependency is in the 'devDependencies' section of the package

by STRML 13y ago

The people in that Debian thread[1] completely misunderstand how Node packages work - the 'jshint' dependency is in the 'devDependencies' section of the package, which means it is not installed by default when `npm install --production` is used, which is how it should be packaged in the first place. Refusing to package Grunt for Debian because it has a devDependency on JSHint is like saying that Node can't be packaged because one of the contributors used a non-free IDE to develop it. No actual non-free software is distributed as part of the code. Regardless, it's not a big deal to `apt-get install nodejs; npm install -g grunt`. [1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=673727 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=673727 Additionally, I'd like to take this moment to remark that dcrockford is being completely pigheaded by not removing the "for good, not evil" part of the license of JSLint. It is completely divorced from reality and detrimental to free software in general. I understand that he thinks he is being an idealist, but there are better ways to promote doing good in the world than assuming that somehow, somewhere, evil-doers are writing evil Javascript (and they would get away with it too!) if only they weren't blocked by your license and could lint their code.

pilif 13y ago
> Regardless, it's not a big deal to `apt-get install nodejs; npm install -g grunt`. Unless of course you have automated the installation of software on your systems. At this point it's somewhere between confusing, mildly annoying and terribly annoying, depending in what route you go. You could make a Debian package yourself, or you use your configuration management system to install the npm package (assuming it supports npm or there is an npm plugin) Both have disadvantages: there are tools to automatically create debs from npm packages, but I've seen bugs with them causing various levels of pain. Or you make the package yourself and get blasted by full-on bureaucracy that is the Debian package build tool chain. Going the configuration management route has the disadvantage that now multiple pieces of software are used to install packages which is a bit inconsistent and might be confusing to other users. Yeah. Not a big deal, but getting stuff directly from your OS vendor is VERY convenient. I agree with your reasoning about the devDependency though. That makes not much sense.

by STRML 13y ago

pilif 13y ago

> Regardless, it's not a big deal to `apt-get install nodejs; npm install -g grunt`. Unless of course you have automated the installation of software on your systems. At this point it's somewhere between confusing, mildly annoying and terribly annoying, depending in what route you go. You could make a Debian package yourself, or you use your configuration management system to install the npm package (assuming it supports npm or there is an npm plugin) Both have disadvantages: there are tools to automatically create debs from npm packages, but I've seen bugs with them causing various levels of pain. Or you make the package yourself and get blasted by full-on bureaucracy that is the Debian package build tool chain. Going the configuration management route has the disadvantage that now multiple pieces of software are used to install packages which is a bit inconsistent and might be confusing to other users. Yeah. Not a big deal, but getting stuff directly from your OS vendor is VERY convenient. I agree with your reasoning about the devDependency though. That makes not much sense.