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  4. Front End Package Manager
  5. Bit vs npm

Bit vs npm

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

npm
npm
Stacks137.4K
Followers82.2K
Votes1.6K
GitHub Stars17.6K
Forks3.0K
Bit
Bit
Stacks42
Followers142
Votes0
GitHub Stars18.3K
Forks942

Bit vs npm: What are the differences?

Key Differences between Bit and npm

Bit and npm are both popular package managers used in web development, but they have some key differences. Here are the main differences between Bit and npm:

  1. Scalability and Modularity: Bit is specifically designed for managing components in a scalable and modular way. It allows developers to isolate and share individual components across different projects, making it easier to reuse code and collaborate. npm, on the other hand, is a general-purpose package manager that focuses on managing dependencies for an entire project.

  2. Dependency Management: npm is primarily focused on managing dependencies at the project level. It allows developers to specify the dependencies their project needs and handles the installation and updating of those dependencies. Bit, on the other hand, allows developers to manage dependencies at a much finer-grained level - at the component level. This means that different components of a project can have their own set of dependencies, which can be individually managed by Bit.

  3. Versioning and Updates: Bit introduces the concept of component versioning, which allows developers to easily track and manage changes to individual components. With Bit, each component can have its own version history and can be updated independently. npm also supports versioning, but it is more focused on managing the overall version of a project and its dependencies.

  4. Registry and Discoverability: npm has a central registry where developers can publish and discover packages. This central registry allows developers to easily find and use existing packages in their projects. Bit, on the other hand, does not have a central registry. Instead, Bit focuses on the discoverability of individual components within a codebase. Components can be shared and discovered within the organization or community using Bit's decentralized approach.

  5. Customization and Configuration: npm provides a wide range of configuration options and allows developers to customize various aspects of package management. It allows developers to specify package scripts, define package metadata, and configure various settings. Bit, on the other hand, is less configurable and focused more on providing a structured and standardized way of managing components.

  6. Integration and Ecosystem: npm has a large and well-established ecosystem with a wide range of packages and tools available. It integrates seamlessly with other development tools and frameworks, making it easy to incorporate new packages into existing projects. Bit, on the other hand, is relatively new and has a smaller ecosystem. It integrates well with popular frameworks like React and Angular, but may require some additional setup and configuration for other frameworks.

In summary, Bit and npm differ in their approach to package management, scalability, dependency management, versioning, discoverability, customization, and integration with the development ecosystem.

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Advice on npm, Bit

StackShare
StackShare

Apr 23, 2019

Needs adviceonNode.jsNode.jsnpmnpmYarnYarn

From a StackShare Community member: “I’m a freelance web developer (I mostly use Node.js) and for future projects I’m debating between npm or Yarn as my default package manager. I’m a minimalist so I hate installing software if I don’t need to- in this case that would be Yarn. For those who made the switch from npm to Yarn, what benefits have you noticed? For those who stuck with npm, are you happy you with it?"

294k views294k
Comments
Mark
Mark

CTO at Gemsotec bvba

Apr 25, 2019

ReviewonReactReactTypeScriptTypeScriptYarnYarn

I use npm because I also mainly use React and TypeScript. Since several typings (from DefinitelyTyped) depend on the React typings, Yarn tends to mess up which leads to duplicate libraries present (different versions of the same type definition), which hinders the Typescript compiler. Npm always resolves to a single version per transitive dependency. At least that's my experience with both.

251k views251k
Comments
Oleksandr
Oleksandr

Senior Software Engineer at joyn

Dec 7, 2019

Decided

As we have to build the application for many different TV platforms we want to split the application logic from the device/platform specific code. Previously we had different repositories and it was very hard to keep the development process when changes were done in multiple repositories, as we had to synchronize code reviews as well as merging and then updating the dependencies of projects. This issues would be even more critical when building the project from scratch what we did at Joyn. Therefor to keep all code in one place, at the same time keeping in separated in different modules we decided to give a try to monorepo. First we tried out lerna which was fine at the beginning, but later along the way we had issues with adding new dependencies which came out of the blue and were not easy to fix. Next round of evolution was yarn workspaces, we are still using it and are pretty happy with dev experience it provides. And one more advantage we got when switched to yarn workspaces that we also switched from npm to yarn what improved the state of the lock file a lot, because with npm package-lock file was updated every time you run npm install, frequent updates of package-lock file were causing very often merge conflicts. So right now we not just having faster dependencies installation time but also no conflicts coming from lock file.

310k views310k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

npm
npm
Bit
Bit

npm is the command-line interface to the npm ecosystem. It is battle-tested, surprisingly flexible, and used by hundreds of thousands of JavaScript developers every day.

It is open source tool that helps you easily publish and manage reusable components. It help teams scale shared components to hundreds and even thousands of components, while eliminating the overhead around this process.

-
Share components and collaborate ;Reusable components; Help teams scale shared components
Statistics
GitHub Stars
17.6K
GitHub Stars
18.3K
GitHub Forks
3.0K
GitHub Forks
942
Stacks
137.4K
Stacks
42
Followers
82.2K
Followers
142
Votes
1.6K
Votes
0
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 648
    Best package management system for javascript
  • 382
    Open-source
  • 327
    Great community
  • 148
    More packages than rubygems, pypi, or packagist
  • 112
    Nice people matter
Cons
  • 5
    Bad at package versioning and being deterministic
  • 5
    Problems with lockfiles
  • 3
    Node-gyp takes forever
  • 1
    Super slow
No community feedback yet
Integrations
No integrations available
GraphQL
GraphQL
Git
Git
Vue.js
Vue.js
Node.js
Node.js
React
React
AngularJS
AngularJS
Yarn
Yarn

What are some alternatives to npm, Bit?

GitHub

GitHub

GitHub is the best place to share code with friends, co-workers, classmates, and complete strangers. Over three million people use GitHub to build amazing things together.

Bitbucket

Bitbucket

Bitbucket gives teams one place to plan projects, collaborate on code, test and deploy, all with free private Git repositories. Teams choose Bitbucket because it has a superior Jira integration, built-in CI/CD, & is free for up to 5 users.

GitLab

GitLab

GitLab offers git repository management, code reviews, issue tracking, activity feeds and wikis. Enterprises install GitLab on-premise and connect it with LDAP and Active Directory servers for secure authentication and authorization. A single GitLab server can handle more than 25,000 users but it is also possible to create a high availability setup with multiple active servers.

RequireJS

RequireJS

RequireJS loads plain JavaScript files as well as more defined modules. It is optimized for in-browser use, including in a Web Worker, but it can be used in other JavaScript environments, like Rhino and Node. It implements the Asynchronous Module API. Using a modular script loader like RequireJS will improve the speed and quality of your code.

Browserify

Browserify

Browserify lets you require('modules') in the browser by bundling up all of your dependencies.

RhodeCode

RhodeCode

RhodeCode provides centralized control over distributed code repositories. Developers get code review tools and custom APIs that work in Mercurial, Git & SVN. Firms get unified security and user control so that their CTOs can sleep at night

AWS CodeCommit

AWS CodeCommit

CodeCommit eliminates the need to operate your own source control system or worry about scaling its infrastructure. You can use CodeCommit to securely store anything from source code to binaries, and it works seamlessly with your existing Git tools.

Gogs

Gogs

The goal of this project is to make the easiest, fastest and most painless way to set up a self-hosted Git service. With Go, this can be done in independent binary distribution across ALL platforms that Go supports, including Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.

Yarn

Yarn

Yarn caches every package it downloads so it never needs to again. It also parallelizes operations to maximize resource utilization so install times are faster than ever.

Gitea

Gitea

Git with a cup of tea! Painless self-hosted all-in-one software development service, including Git hosting, code review, team collaboration, package registry and CI/CD. It published under the MIT license.

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