Honestly I think the main thing that the JS ecosystem does well is dependency / package management (npm). The standard library is very small so everything has to be added as a dependency in package.json, but it mostly works without any of the issues you often see in other languages.
Yeah, it’s not perfect, but it’s better than anything else I’ve tried:
Python’s approach is pretty terrible (pip, easy_install, etc.) and global vs local packages
Ruby has its own hell with bundler and where stuff goes
PHP has had a few phases like python (composer and whatnot) and left everyone confused
Java needs things somewhere in its $PATH but it’s never clear where (altough it’s better with Gradle and Maven)
C needs root access because the only form of dependency management is apt-get
In contrast, NPM is pretty simple: it creates a node_modules and puts everything there. No conflicts because project A uses left-pad 1.5 and project B uses left-pad 2.1. They can both have their own versions, thank you very much.
Honestly I think the main thing that the JS ecosystem does well is dependency / package management (npm). The standard library is very small so everything has to be added as a dependency in package.json, but it mostly works without any of the issues you often see in other languages.
Yeah, it’s not perfect, but it’s better than anything else I’ve tried:
In contrast, NPM is pretty simple: it creates a node_modules and puts everything there. No conflicts because project A uses left-pad 1.5 and project B uses left-pad 2.1. They can both have their own versions, thank you very much.
You can use
~/.local/libandLD_LIBRARY_PATHfor shared libs.Or better yet just give in and use the
nixpackage manager, it is basically a virtual environment for your C programs.