Give npm scripts a chance | Hacker News Reader

Give npm scripts a chance

blog.cesarandreu.com

bash (or whatever shell you prefer) aliases and functions do all this, but with way less typing at time of use. What am I missing?

You can commit package.json to git and it will be easier to share with others on your team in a heterogeneous environment.

Still not sure I get it.

The benefit is: distribute via npm

The cost is: (lots of) extra typing for common commands

When I'm in my terminal (messing with Docker, changing permissions, running scripts, etc.), I run a lot of aliased commands, so the cost is much higher than the benefit for me.

Distribution via npm isn't that much better than committing a bash script to a git repo and having everyone on the team add it to .bashrc (or whatever their equivalent is). npm is just an extra layer for something that bash supports natively.

These scripts will likely work on Windows, while shell scripts won't. Not everybody uses MacOSX or Linux to dev on.

I have enough trouble dealing with folks who do Mac only stuff (as a Linux user) to not be sensitive to those concerns.

Your dev environment isn't the only dev environment.

Using package.json is simpler when you're working on multiple projects.

It also means that if you decide to contribute to a random project, you can simply run "npm test" to make sure your changes are valid. No need to screw around installing mocha or karma or whatever test framework the project is using.

You can safely assume that everyone that's using node will have npm, so it makes sense to keep tasks contained in npm.

It does, but you'll have to load it or set it up manually.

You can safely assume that everyone using node will have npm, so keeping scripts contained within package.json is simpler.

If someone decides to contribute to your project they don't have to worry about setting anything up, they can run "npm test" or whatever tasks.

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