aalaap, 11 months ago

Why isn't there an #npx alternative yet?

noim, 11 months ago

@aalaap What would you expect from a npx alternative?

aalaap, 11 months ago

@noim I don't know. I mean, there's #yarn and #pnpm as #npm alternatives, so I'd be interested in seeing alternate takes on #npx.

voxpelli, 11 months ago

@aalaap @noim Which part of it? npx is pretty much a shorthand for npm exec (https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v7/commands/npm-exec) + for all installed packages you can find their executables in “node-modules/.bin/“ and can execute them like any normal CLI
command from there

aalaap, 11 months ago

@voxpelli @noim

Kid saying "Something amazing, I guess" from the movie The Incredibles (2004).

aalaap, 11 months ago

@voxpelli @noim I'm not saying something is missing, nor do I have any specific ideas for improvement, but I'm just wondering why there aren't many alternatives and that I'd like to know what ideas others may have.

voxpelli, 11 months ago

@aalaap @noim Actually: yarn has had an npx style command since before npm

If you run eg “yarn eslint” in a repository with ESLint installed, then the binary of eslint will run

See https://yarnpkg.com/cli/run

It has been a bit of a contentious decision, some consider it bad practice as it can have confusing conflicts with built in yarn commands or defined npm scripts, hence I believe why npm opted for a separate command (and even the design of that one has been somewhat contentious)

aalaap, 11 months ago

@voxpelli @noim I don't use #yarn much personally, so I'm not sure about those features.

One of the things I don't like about #npx is that it takes the same amount of time as an #npm install, even if I have already run the npx command and downloaded (cached) the packages earlier. I've not found a way around this and I'm really hoping there was a way to run npx #offline.