Pika: Making it easier to find, publish, install, and use modern packages on npm

Post by johnisgood » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 7:29 PM UTC

derimagia wrote: post #40

johnisgood wrote: post #38

Excuse my ignorance, but was not it already easy to do these operations? Seems like yet another centralized package repository with a supposedly visually appealing interface, where this interface is done just a little bit differently. Edit: apparently it is not a package repository, my bad. Could someone please explain to me what exactly it is and its use cases? Is this supposed to replace some of the features of npm…

It doesn't look like a package repository. It's just a UI for the npm repository and some type of build tool.

Post by johnisgood » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 8:01 PM UTC

jondubois wrote: post #4

saagarjha wrote: post #2

From the news I hear (which is quite slanted, I will admit, since I write very little JavaScript) the issue with npm is that it's too easy to publish things on npm and use them, which leads to a dependency mess and breakage when things are removed or get hacked. Is this something that the JavaScript community needs?

I don't think that npm itself should be blamed for being too easy to use - That's a good thing in most cases. I think that the main problem is that a couple of years ago some very vocal members of the Node.js community had been promoting a hard-line philosophy around publishing and using tiny modules. The consequence of that is that projects ended up with hundreds of tiny dependencies (and sub-dependencies) which inc…

Post by johnisgood » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 8:08 PM UTC

ascorbic wrote: post #42

johnisgood wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least I got the second part right! :D But yeah, I guess the author was not content with https://www.npmjs.com ? Is it even supposed to replace it? I have no idea.

Seems pretty clear to me: it's a way to search for npm packages that are published as ES modules. You can't filter by that on npmjs.com, so this does fill a need. The other parts of the project help you publish packages in ESM format, which can be a pain to do manually.

Post by true_religion » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 8:11 PM UTC

johnisgood wrote: post #45

ascorbic wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems pretty clear to me: it's a way to search for npm packages that are published as ES modules. You can't filter by that on npmjs.com, so this does fill a need. The other parts of the project help you publish packages in ESM format, which can be a pain to do manually.

Why not fix npmjs.com instead of scattering things around ad infinitum?

Post by l_t » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 8:28 PM UTC

ascorbic wrote: post #44

hliyan wrote: post #9

While I'm a big fan of native modules, I find the constant use of the adjective "modern" in new JS project descriptions somewhat disturbing. Being modern in itself is not of any value. If it loads faster, or if it obviates the need for a bundler, or if it makes granular upgrades easier, or if it reduces the amount of configurations or tooling, we should put those benefits first.

In the sense they're using it here it's perfectly valid. ES Modules are the modern replacement for the old legacy JS module systems.