Show HN: PickBetterPack – Discover similar pkgs from package.json dependencies

pickbetterpack.com

22 points·felladrin··5 comments

Interesting idea, but it doesn't seem to work as I expected. E.g. plugging in "leaflet" package I do not get other map display libs, only some mostly unrelated plugins. With updating old packages popularity and download count might be not best metrics, as some less popular or rarely updated projects might be still usable. Security should play important role in suggestions, especially finding insecure packages in provided package.json list, and providing alternatives that should be easy to replace - introducing some new packages might result in whole day of work to get it working with all parts of project.

Awesome feedback! I liked especially the suggestion about displaying easy-to-replace packages, as Similar, to vulnerable packages currently used. I'm reworking the package similarity matcher to provide better results, and I'll take all your suggestions into account. Thanks!

Hi, HN!

I started creating this tool for discovering similar NPM packages based on dependencies listed in a package.json.

Mainly useful when resurrecting that 3-year-old project, suggesting alternatives that are popular nowadays.

I'm still fine tuning the package matching, but I wanted to share it and know what think!

Something that could be improve? Anything that needs to change or is missing in the page? I appreciate any feedback.

If you could directly fetch the list of dependencies from a npm module name, it would make it a lot easier to use for a lot of people :)

It seems to have a lot of useful suggestions for alternatives, so thanks for creating and sharing it!

Thank you! That's a great idea!

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