NPM - Package Manager
Table of Content:
Before Getting Started
Let us understand few basic concepts behind packages and package management.
To start with, developers create code to solve some specific problems. Often, this code is reusable and can be shared to ease fellow developers' work.
So, for the greater good, developers make their code available to all.
The individual file of a reusable code is called a
Module.
Packages
A Package is a directory which contains one or more modules along with a file called package.json.
Note: The terms module and package are used interchangeably.
Package Manager
A Package Manager, as the name suggests, helps developers share packages, install packages and manage version upgrades.
There are many package managers like Bower and npm that developers can use.
Why so many Package Managers?
Every package manager is built for a specific purpose. So developers need to choose packages based on their need.
For example, Bower is built specifically for front-end libraries like jquery, angular, bootstrap and so on. It works on the principle of minimal resource load which is essential for your front-end to load quickly.
On the other hand, npm is mostly used for node.js packages and developer tools like Grunt, Gulp, CoffeeScript and so on. npm aims for stability and hence loads all nested dependencies of a package.
About this course
You will learn the how to:
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Search for existing packages, install them and to use them in your projects.
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Publish your own package and open it up to the community.
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Use a few npm commands that our developers are fond of.
Best way to learn "npm"
The best way to learn is to try as you Learn
For hands-on exercises in this course, you may use the given hands-ons in the further topics.