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Why do you think NPM is "the most unreliable package manager"? I don't use Node, but I thought the general consensus was that it's one of the best out there. I'

by arms 12y ago

Why do you think NPM is "the most unreliable package manager"? I don't use Node, but I thought the general consensus was that it's one of the best out there. I'm genuinely curious.

stormbeta 12y ago
No offense, but where on earth did you get that impression from? I have a feeling whoever told you that has either never used npm with a non-trivial project or was messing with you. I've had more issues with npm in the last month than I've had with pip, gem, and apt combined over the last two years. "most unreliable package manager" is an apt descriptor.
- fletchowns 12y ago
  Is the issue just that npmjs.org is frequently unavailable? Surely any serious project will have their own mirror of NPM, PyPI, apt, yum, etc so they are not relying on third party servers they don't control to be able to do a build/deploy/whatever.
- shayanjm 12y ago
  If you've used it for anything non-trivial, then you probably should've been using a private registry - in which case you get the decentralized benefits of npm sans npmjs.org availability issues. source: a number of non-trivial node deploys
- arms 12y ago
  None taken. I got the impression from comments on HN and elsewhere. To be fair, those comments might've been from Node advocates, so they could've been skewed. Is one of the (main) problems that the registry is often unavailable?
jaredsohn 12y ago
I think npm gets praised by proponents based on how it integrates with the language and handles dependencies rather than on the reliability of the server.
mrmondo 12y ago
Sorry for the late reply here, It feels like NPM's package mirrors go down almost every week and often for hours at a time. The whole thing feels thrown together - even the output from the installer colours successful commands as RED so when you are watching a build you think 'Oh crap somethings broken! - oh no, wait it's just NPM again...'

by arms 12y ago

Why do you think NPM is "the most unreliable package manager"? I don't use Node, but I thought the general consensus was that it's one of the best out there. I'm genuinely curious.

stormbeta 12y ago

No offense, but where on earth did you get that impression from? I have a feeling whoever told you that has either never used npm with a non-trivial project or was messing with you. I've had more issues with npm in the last month than I've had with pip, gem, and apt combined over the last two years. "most unreliable package manager" is an apt descriptor.

fletchowns 12y ago
Is the issue just that npmjs.org is frequently unavailable? Surely any serious project will have their own mirror of NPM, PyPI, apt, yum, etc so they are not relying on third party servers they don't control to be able to do a build/deploy/whatever.
shayanjm 12y ago
If you've used it for anything non-trivial, then you probably should've been using a private registry - in which case you get the decentralized benefits of npm sans npmjs.org availability issues. source: a number of non-trivial node deploys
arms 12y ago
None taken. I got the impression from comments on HN and elsewhere. To be fair, those comments might've been from Node advocates, so they could've been skewed. Is one of the (main) problems that the registry is often unavailable?

jaredsohn 12y ago

I think npm gets praised by proponents based on how it integrates with the language and handles dependencies rather than on the reliability of the server.

mrmondo 12y ago

Sorry for the late reply here, It feels like NPM's package mirrors go down almost every week and often for hours at a time. The whole thing feels thrown together - even the output from the installer colours successful commands as RED so when you are watching a build you think 'Oh crap somethings broken! - oh no, wait it's just NPM again...'