deps: Including additional binaries with npm?

[zkat]

Hey y'all!

So, the npm team is planning on bundling npx with the standard npm distribution sometime soonish. We figured we should let y'all know asap so we can start having a conversation about how this would affect your own distribution (if at all), and if there's anything you need from us to get this to work -- since right now, we only ship the npm binary, and this would mean an additional npx getting installed into users' bin dir.

idk if there's much to say here besides that! If this is just fine, feel free to close it, and we'll give y'all a heads up when we push a version of npm with npx bundled into it (in the next month or so). We think npx is gonna be a pretty core/important tool for npm users, since it'll give everyone easier access to the various CLI tools available in the npm registry, as well as solve a long-standing problem where there's been no standardised way to invoke devDependency binaries while working interactively.

[mscdex]

To be clear, "binaries" here doesn't mean actual compiled executables/addons but instead node script files, right?

[zkat]

@mscdex yes, I'm using binaries in the npm parlance sense -- executables. In this case, it's definitely just a node script.

[bnoordhuis]

Did you check for name conflicts with existing programs? I didn't find anything called 'npx' in apt (debian) but that's not exhaustive.

[targos]

No result on Fedora with dnf search npx and dnf provides npx.

[refack]

Nothing on chocolatey 🤣

[Fishrock123]

There is no default formula for any npx binaries.

This does mean shipping another dep though with all the same weird caveats that shipping npm has (albeit npx is much smaller because it used npm).

[gibfahn]

This does mean shipping another dep though with all the same weird caveats that shipping npm has

Presumably it'll be included in the npm source, so it won't be a separate folder in deps/ or anything, just another dependency in our npm updates.

[bnoordhuis]

I interpreted that comment as needing to update installers, etc. I'm curious if distro vendors would package it.

[Fishrock123]

Presumably it'll be included in the npm source, so it won't be a separate folder in deps/ or anything, just another dependency in our npm updates.

I do not think this is the case, npx is it's own module?

[zkat]

I checked this originally when I chose the npx name, and there doesn't seem to be any such package on the couple of distros I checked, nor any real conflicts anywhere. I'm also the owner of npm.im/npx itself, so it's fine to clobber it with npm's own (and vice-versa).

It will be included with the npm sources, and installed alongside the regular npm binary. It will be an additional bin entry in npm's own package.json (essentially a re-export script). We're bundling npx with npm -- so it won't be an extra entry in deps/, it'll be in deps/npm/node_modules/npx.

[MylesBorins]

it looks like this is going to be coming in a future semver minor of npm. If we plan to ship this we need to ensure it ends up in the binary as expected and is installed properly by the double click installers

[refack]

@zkat what do you see the install formula being? i.e. if the npm lands as a zip, what will create the binary shims, or will they be already packed in the zip?