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Entropic – A Federated Package Manager for JavaScript

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Re: Entropic – A Federated Package Manager for JavaScript

#61

Post by bdcravens »

cjbprime wrote: post #40
Touche wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like this approach too. npm at least, and perhaps other package managers, are replicating DNS a bit too much for my taste, by providing their own (centralized) namespace. Why not use the existing namespace that is DNS (which is decentralized). It's pretty nice to be able to host my packages on my own servers with my own domain name.

Usually the motivation is that the federated package names are much longer than the centralized short package names.

Eliminating short names as a value hopefully will encourage more semantic names instead of cute words that are entirely non-descriptive.

Re: Entropic – A Federated Package Manager for JavaScript

#62

Post by cjbprime »

mstade wrote: post #60
andy_ppp wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or even end up with low quality generic defaults for things like routing in react because someone got the default name of say the routing library.

Presumably, if you really want short names, a local hosts like config with aliased names would do the job just fine. This has the added benefit that everyone can have their own aliases.

No, I think the attraction to centralization is not only that it can provide short names, but that it can provide short names that everyone agrees on the meaning of.

Re: Entropic – A Federated Package Manager for JavaScript

#63

Post by steveklabnik »

regularfry wrote: post #58
steveklabnik wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To put some perspective on this, comparing Debian to npm: Number of packages: Debian has 172,000 packages for the most popular architecture, amd64. i386 has 24,000 packages. The rest have less than 500 each. npm recently broke a million packages. Download counts: I couldn't find numbers for Debian. npm served 11.2 billion downloads last week. (Debian numbers retrieved by https://popcon.debian.org/ , npm numbers from…

Debian also has a repository model which allows the packages to be served by a static file server, because the dependency resolution is entirely client-side. Npm doesn't.

Hm, as far as I know, resolution is also entirely client-side for npm. Do you have any links about this?

Re: Entropic – A Federated Package Manager for JavaScript

#64

Post by playpause »

na85 wrote: post #7
jammi wrote: post #2

I don't believe yet another package manager is going to fix anything, more likely it'll take years to reach maturity, will be riddled with bugs until then, and have some serious fundamental issues on its own that will be revealed down the path, if it ever gains popularity. Don't fix it if it aint broke should be a motto for more developers. Settling for good enough prevents second system effects and retards immaturit…

Most JavaScript-related threads I see on HN feature at least a handful of comments from people who will avow that e.g. the npm ecosystem is hot garbage. Seems to me that it is broke and needs fixed.

Works fine for me. Could be better, but 'broke' is a strong word for something I use heavily, daily, with very few problems. Of course HN users love to complain that the npm ecosystem is full of junk, but that's like complaining that most websites are junk. Just learn to find the good ones. Learn to identify high quality packages. Run it by someone more experienced if you're not sure. And if you really can't find a decent quality package that fulfils your requirements, then that's probably a sign your requirements are specific, so roll up your sleeves and write some code.

Re: Entropic – A Federated Package Manager for JavaScript

#65

Post by WorldMaker »

cjbprime wrote: post #62
mstade wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably, if you really want short names, a local hosts like config with aliased names would do the job just fine. This has the added benefit that everyone can have their own aliases.

No, I think the attraction to centralization is not only that it can provide short names, but that it can provide short names that everyone agrees on the meaning of.

Which is a fascinating echo of the arguments between proponents of AOL Keywords and DNS.

Re: Entropic – A Federated Package Manager for JavaScript

#66

Post by mmcclure »

There's quite a bit of hand wringing about whether or not this is good or bad as if there's no universe in which Entropic and NPM simply co-exist. Options/competition is good for tools like this, why not encourage it?

On the "new registries" note, though, and I might be alone on this one, I'm honestly the most interested in Github's package registry. No, it's not decentralized, yes it's still owned by a big company, but I'm personally fine with the tradeoffs there. It's kind of reassuring that the entirety of Github's revenue is a rounding error for Microsoft, so I at least don't think there's the same concern around the VC backing of NPM.

Re: Entropic – A Federated Package Manager for JavaScript

#67

Post by Lowkeyloki »

kostarelo wrote: post #25
eeZah7Ux wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. APT is used to install JS libraries already but people prefer the npm because it gives people enough freedom [to make the ecosystem a complete mess].

Can you please explain how APT limits freedom?

I think it only limits "freedom" in that it only makes sense on Debian-based operating systems. Whereas I can and do run npm on tons of different Linux distributions, MacOS, and (theoretically) Windows.

You can do things with deb packages on other Linux distributions kinda-sorta using various programs and scripts, but it's not painless. And Mac and Windows are right out.

The same applies generally as to why there are usually two types of dependency managers. One for binary packages and binary shared libraries (even though these often include source code for C & C++ stuff), and one for specific language development environments. See also Rust, Dart, Python, Ruby, Go, Lua, etc., etc. All those languages have their own package managers.

Re: Entropic – A Federated Package Manager for JavaScript

#68

Post by boblebricoleur »

neurotrace wrote: post #45
boblebricoleur wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point was : node is just a web server and npm just a package manager. There was countless before, there will be countless after, we will continue to code with or without. I have worked with a few technologies and in a few industries and package management is always complicated. The nature of the package management tools are not that important. The passion that this kind of topic seems to unleash looks like the con…

Minor note: it's not accurate to say that node is a web server. Web servers are frequently built with node but node is also used for CLIs, graphical applications, parsers, compilers, etc.

I see. Thanks for the clarification

Re: Entropic – A Federated Package Manager for JavaScript

#69

Post by eeZah7Ux »

kostarelo wrote: post #25
eeZah7Ux wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. APT is used to install JS libraries already but people prefer the npm because it gives people enough freedom [to make the ecosystem a complete mess].

Can you please explain how APT limits freedom?

By default it does not allow to distribute and install multiple versions of the same library, and for good reasons.
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