Just learned that there exists another package manager: Static Package Manager or spm.js - http://spmjs.io/. From brief reviewing of the documentation the tool seems very similar to "old good" Bower.
Is it so? What is different about spm.js that Bower or npm don't provide?
spm.js, bower, volo, component, jspm, npm + browserify etc. all serve front-end developers and the end result you get is very similar. Here are some differences to consider:
spm.js manages binaries via the publish command similar to npm, where as bower fetches from git endpoints (however there's discussion to change this)
spm.js packages are CommonJS packages and it's recommended to use it with the module loader sea.js, bower is indifferent about module loaders, npm isn't optimized for front-end dev yet, however browserify helps
Both spm.js and sea.js are popular within the Chinese developer community as they're driven by the great folks at Alipay. Though there's English docs, most discussion on github happen in Chinese (e.g. discussion on positioning & the future)
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I am following a Microservices course that creates a free NMP account and pushes a package he writes through the course into it and imports this package in other related files of the application like a common NPM module/package.
He also mentions there are other options like using Github or some local Git/version controller, etc.
As I am trying to make a commercial project for my own startup, I am curious to know what is a good/affordable option for a startup company in this situation? Is is still a good idea to use NPM free public account to push some packages and use it through our application?
I think that if you are creating a module that can be useful to the community or part of it, NPM is an interesting option to keep your packages.
If you're uploading not usable packages, but your whole application to npm, then that's messed up, NPM is a package registry. Github, Gitlab, and tools alike should be a more suitable option since those are general-purpose code repositories, not package registries.
Also, be aware that the packages you upload on a free npm account are available to any NPM user. see: NPM Private Packages
From my previous experience, both GitLab and Github offer good free small professional accounts that may be suitable for your case.
Recently, node package manager is very popular and doing a lot of job for us, however it is really difficult to understand what is going on under the hood. I really like simple tags to insert Vue, Babel etc. Haven't worked on big projects, I really wonder is there any disadvantages using script tags over npm-cli.
When you npm install a library, plugin, extension, etc it can be declared as a dependency with a --save flag. In doing so it is marked as a dependency in your package.json file, which is key to version control for your dependencies. If you just use the CDN you are pulling in a path to a library that may be deprecated at some point in the future.
During development it is ok to use CDNs, but in production it is not good practice for dependencies (though I do it for certain exceptions, such as a google font).
I'm a front end dev who wants make a blog/portfolio site using express js.
I've used codekit in the past to compile,minify & autoprefix my JADE/SASS files, and to minify my JS files, but I have no idea where to start when going full stack. I've been reading up on gulp (as I assume this will do all the things that codekit does) but I don't understand fully what I need.
Do I need bower aswell? Do I control all the gulp plugins using NPM?
How do I get all this to work with Zurb Foundation 6?
If you are planning to use Express, then Gulp is a good choice. Like you said, gulp can automatically do all the stuff you need; also is very customizable. You don't need Bower to use it, personally I don't use Bower but I use Gulp. All the packages are managed by Node Package Manager (npm). Finally I don't know about support of Zurb Foundation 6. By a quick research I see there is a npm plugin for version 5, but I think there's not one for version 6.
Here's a link with all npm packages and a guide to begin using Gulp:
https://css-tricks.com/gulp-for-beginners/
https://www.npmjs.com/
I hope my answer help you.
I've built out this simple library https://github.com/FarhadG/script-tag-data and you can either clone it down or install via bower but I'm curious how I should go about turning it into an npm, browserify, etc. module.
Since you already have your project on github, for publishing to npm, you can follow the guide over here : npm-developers
AFAIK, browserify doesn't have a registry. You probably meant bower. Follow this guide : Creating Packages
And maybe use Google search next time, yeah?
Can someone explain to me the difference between NPM, Bower and Composer.
They are all package managers - correct?
But when should each one be used?
Also, each one appears to have a json file that accompanies it, does this store all the packages you require so they can be installed by cmd line? Why do you need this file?
[update, four years later]
bower is deprecated, and should not be used anymore for new projects. To a large extent, it has been subsumed into node dependency management (from their website: "While Bower is maintained, we recommend using Yarn and Webpack or Parcel for front-end projects").
yarn came out of the wood as a better npm (fixing several of npm flaws), and this is really what you should use now, as it is the new de-facto standard if you are doing front-end or node development. It does consume the same package.json as npm, and is almost entirely compatible with it.
I wouldn't use composer at this point (because I wouldn't use php), although it seems to still be alive and popular
[original answer]
npm is nodejs package manager. It therefore targets nodejs environments, which usually means server-side nodejs projects or command-line projects (bower itself is a npm package). If you are going to do anything with nodejs, then you are going to use npm.
bower is a package manager that aims at (front-end) web projects. You need npm and nodejs to install bower and to execute it, though bower packages are not meant specifically for nodejs, but rather for the "browser" environment.
composer is a dependency manager that targets php projects. If you are doing something with symfony (or plain old php), this is likely the way to go
Summing it up:
doing node? you do npm
doing php? try composer
front-end javascript? try bower
And yes, the "json" files describe basic package information and dependencies. And yes, they are needed.
Now, what about the READMEs? :-)
https://github.com/bower/bower
https://www.npmjs.org/doc/cli/npm.html
https://getcomposer.org/doc/00-intro.md