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Flat Tree Dependency Resolution in Npm v3

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Re: Flat Tree Dependency Resolution in Npm v3

#61

Post by moron4hire »

city41 wrote: post #53
gelasio wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you're getting annoyed that the devs of certain projects like Node.js have chosen to support an OS that you don't use without asking you about it first... If you're in control of the project - you have every right to ignore Windows users. If you're not in control, then you really have zero right to complain. Zero. Devs certainly aren't forced to "pay the Windows tax" in any way. Plenty of OSS projects…

Windows is very much an outlier in the world of software development. Unless you're specifically using Microsoft tech (ie .NET and all that), then you're in a world dominated by Linux and OSX. I'm annoyed that Microsoft insists on going forward with a proprietary OS that does not conform to standards that pretty much every single other OS does. Sure, platform specific issues do happen for other OSes, but they are rar…

>> Windows is very much an outlier in the world of software development. Unless you're specifically using Microsoft tech (ie .NET and all that)

I think you need to get out more. Or at least go to meetups that don't only meet at coffee shops. You're cutting out a huge chunk there, and there are still huge chunks that use Windows to do Java, C++, etc.

I mean, game development is a multi billion dollar industry that is almost exclusively Windows-but-not-.NET, outside of consoles, and even on consoles it's still Windows in a large number of cases.

>> I'm annoyed that Microsoft insists on going forward with a proprietary OS that does not conform to standards that pretty much every single other OS does.

This is different from Apple with OSX and iOS how? This is different from Google with Android how? This is different from Canonical with Unity how? This is different than RedHat and Debian and pretty much every other major Linux distro with systemd how?

And for crying out loud, file separator issues? That's not even a hard one.

Re: Flat Tree Dependency Resolution in Npm v3

#62

Post by nawitus »

theGimp wrote: post #37
dc2 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When your actual Node .js file runs `require('a')`, it has no context to determine which version it is requiring. To expect Node to look for a package.json file at runtime is absurd. This presents a problem.

I'm guessing the current behavior for require is to bubble up the directory structure and look for "node_packages". So resolving things at runtime is already happening. I agree using package.json at runtime is not the best solution though. A way to keep things clean and avoid using package.json is to use symlinks instead of downloading a fresh copy, which would make putting everything at the top level a possibility.…

Symlinks would make copying and archiving the node_modules structure more problematic.

Re: Flat Tree Dependency Resolution in Npm v3

#63

Post by hoodoof »

Sorry to be negative but one of the things that I hate more than anything in my software development work is typing "npm install blah" and almost always being hit with wave after wave of errors typically related to dependencies. I don't know why it happens and I don't care I just wish they'd fix it. So many, many errors.

Go on, try installing X packages at random using npm - did they install cleanly?

The baseline outcome for using a package installer should not be reams of errors, it should be a cleanly installed package. Installing packages works fine with other language ecosystems, why not with npm?

Re: Flat Tree Dependency Resolution in Npm v3

#64

Post by nawitus »

davexunit wrote: post #43
munificent wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Language-specific package manager developers would do well to either implement similar systems in their projects This is what we did with Dart's package manager[1]. It works like Bundler where it finds a single set of package versions that satisfy all of the constraints and there are no duplicate packages. It's a challenge because constraint solving is NP-complete, but it works very well in practice. [1]: https://p…

>This is what we did with Dart's package manager[1]. It works like Bundler where it finds a single set of package versions that satisfy all of the constraints and there are no duplicate packages. Constraint solving is the status quo, and I am strongly opposed to it. Rather than saying "I want foo >= 1.0" in a package manager, you should have the build system test the environment for the features you need. This is wha…

Language specific package managers seem to actually work in real life and are cross platform, e.g. npm. But I'm not aware of anything for e.g. C++ which would offer the features of npm (mainly installing dependencies with a single command and supporting GNU/Linux, OS X and Windows).

Is there a single non-language specific package manager which is cross platform, and supports a large percentage of packages for a given programming language?

Note that I'm not saying npm is excellent, but I'm not aware of a single successful language-independent package manager. If there are none, why?

Re: Flat Tree Dependency Resolution in Npm v3

#65

Post by nawitus »

alextgordon wrote: post #51
davexunit wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The better goal would be that the entire state of the node modules directory is a pure function of the contents of the package.json file plus the platform details Yes, this would have been much better than this new, also-broken approach. Functional package managers like the one I work on, GNU Guix, have this problem solved and solved well. Language-specific package manager developers would do well to either implemen…

When we ship node modules to be embedded into Chocolat.app, we have to strip out all the tests and documentation because otherwise it bloats the download size. And the computer it eventually runs on may not be connected to the internet. The nice thing about node is that it's quite small (3.4MB zipped). We don't have to ship npm with the app, and certainly an OS level package manager would be way too large!

Each package should strip tests and documentation from the package. Of course, many don't..

Re: Flat Tree Dependency Resolution in Npm v3

#66

Post by nawitus »

city41 wrote: post #56
gelasio wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, are you of the opinion that OSS projects should never be built for any commercial, proprietary OS or just Windows (i.e. because it's not Unix)? For instance - OS X window managers suck. Do you think that a project like Spectacle should have never been built because they're just picking up Apple's slack?

I don't see how a project like Spectacle, which is OSX specific, relates. If someone wants to make an OS specific project, more power to them. The issue arises on platforms that span OSes, and they just never quite span onto Windows correctly. Microsoft is very happy that Node, Java, Clojure, etc work on Windows. It helps them a lot. But they make little to no effort to help bridge the gap, they usually leave that to…

I believe Microsoft worked to get Node.js supported on Windows.

Re: Flat Tree Dependency Resolution in Npm v3

#67

Post by martindevans »

gelasio wrote: post #59
city41 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how a project like Spectacle, which is OSX specific, relates. If someone wants to make an OS specific project, more power to them. The issue arises on platforms that span OSes, and they just never quite span onto Windows correctly. Microsoft is very happy that Node, Java, Clojure, etc work on Windows. It helps them a lot. But they make little to no effort to help bridge the gap, they usually leave that to…

"But they make little to no effort to help bridge the gap, they usually leave that to everyone else." OK, but that's also where you're wrong, right there. In general, but also particularly for this exact issue - Microsoft considered attempting to fix the file path limit for the first release of Windows 10. Maybe you don't understand, but it's going to take a herculean effort to fix this. They want to do it and if you…

Don't UNC paths solve this problem already (30000+ char limit)?

Re: Flat Tree Dependency Resolution in Npm v3

#68

Post by tlrobinson »

"dependency resolution depends on install order"

Does this sound insane to anyone else?

EDIT: I understand not wanting to modify node's `require` semantics, but this is an unacceptable sacrifice of consistency for efficiency. Surely it would have been possible for an `npm install --save x` to put the `node_modules` directory in a state identical to `npm install --save x && rm -rf node_modules && npm install`. It might take a little longer to shuffle some directories around, but certainly not longer than a full `npm install`.

Re: Flat Tree Dependency Resolution in Npm v3

#69

Post by gcr »

nawitus wrote: post #64
davexunit wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is what we did with Dart's package manager[1]. It works like Bundler where it finds a single set of package versions that satisfy all of the constraints and there are no duplicate packages. Constraint solving is the status quo, and I am strongly opposed to it. Rather than saying "I want foo >= 1.0" in a package manager, you should have the build system test the environment for the features you need. This is wha…

Language specific package managers seem to actually work in real life and are cross platform, e.g. npm. But I'm not aware of anything for e.g. C++ which would offer the features of npm (mainly installing dependencies with a single command and supporting GNU/Linux, OS X and Windows). Is there a single non-language specific package manager which is cross platform, and supports a large percentage of packages for a given…

Conda aspires to be exactly that. It attempts to package the entire Python scientific stack, but its general purpose nature lets you package other kinds of software as well (for instance, conda can replace compiling arbitrary C programs from source and installing them into your home folder)
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