Show HN: JSPkg.com - host javascript packages (like gemcutter for js) | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: JSPkg.com - host javascript packages (like gemcutter for js)

jspkg.com

24 pointsJangoSteve10 comments

I'll try to keep this short, since I'd like to get people's first impressions from the site itself, but I'll give a little background. I started building this in May. Since plugins.jquery.com was shut down a week and a half ago, I pushed it live so I could have somewhere to host my own plugins.

Even though it's smart enough to single out jquery plugins and label them as such, my stance is that all plugins are just scripts with a dependency on some library. So this site is meant to be a host for ALL javascript projects, whether they're libraries, frameworks, plugins, or standalone scripts, and whether they're front-end or back-end.

It follows the CommonJS spec for reading data from a package.json file, but also provides on-the-fly creation for projects that don't have one (with a package.json generator).

Any and all feedback welcome. For the curious, it's a Rails 3.1 app with a js-heavy front-end (being on the jquery-rails / jquery-ujs team, it's what I know best), though I've been considering switching the package uploader and processor mechanism to node.

Woo way to go, Steve! I'm certainly looking forward to having a non-suck place to go for javascript libraries.

What would be awesome of you is to generate a .js instead of a zip.

For example I could include <script src="jspkg.org/coffeescript/xregexp/.../.js"> and it would make a single .js file with all the dependencies sorted out.

If you could make it work with npm packages that would be even more awesome :)

Thanks for the feedback, that's definitely in the plans, for building out basically a cdn where you can directly link to the files. I just need to figure out how that works with scripts that require css, images, etc.

Awesome work! I've left a few little user flow issues in get satisfaction, but on the whole, it's really great. One thing I'm curious about- how can I update the version of a project once it's up?

You just upload a new release, the same way you add a new project. When a release is uploaded, the back-end figures out if it's a new project or a new release and processes it appropriately.

EDIT: And thanks for your feedback.

Aha, thanks.

I had a little sneak peak at this site, and still think it's very cool. One of the cool things is that after this was pushed live, the jQuery team announced that they were updating the plugins.jquery.com site and many of the features were very similar.

Continue to market it as library agnostic - I think that is one of the key differentiators of this site. The idea of a CDN is very cool as well, although I'd worry about bandwidth costs doing something like that. Maybe that is the premium version in a freemium model? (No idea if you plan to make this a commercial venture at some point.)

I think it's important we have a host for ALL javascript projects, not just jQuery projects, and I think this site does a pretty damn good job of getting us there. Very nice work.

Awesome work, looks good so far.

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