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  1. Stackups
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  4. Front End Package Manager
  5. Browserify vs npm

Browserify vs npm

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Browserify
Browserify
Stacks2.2K
Followers414
Votes261
npm
npm
Stacks137.4K
Followers82.2K
Votes1.6K
GitHub Stars17.6K
Forks3.0K

Browserify vs npm: What are the differences?

  1. Browserify vs npm: Browserify is a tool that is used to bundle JavaScript files for the browser, while npm is a package manager for JavaScript.
  2. Dependency Management: Browserify is primarily used for bundling modules together whereas npm is used to install and manage dependencies for a project.
  3. Usage: Browserify is used in development to bundle modules, while npm is used in both development and production environments for managing dependencies.
  4. Workflow Integration: Browserify is integrated into the development workflow to create bundles, whereas npm is integrated into the workflow to install and manage project dependencies.
  5. Community Support: Browserify has a smaller community compared to npm, which has a vast community of developers and packages available for use.
  6. Execution Environment: Browserify is focused on client-side environments, helping to create browser-compatible bundles, while npm is more generic and can be used in a variety of environments like server-side Node.js applications or client-side projects.

In Summary, Browserify is a tool for bundling JavaScript files for the browser, while npm is a package manager for JavaScript, with differences including their primary use, dependency management, workflow integration, community support, and execution environment.

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Advice on Browserify, npm

Julien
Julien

CTO at Jasp

May 15, 2022

Decided

Yarn v3 is a fantastic tool to organize monorepos. Thanks to its offline cache, our CI/CD steps are streamlined and faster.

Other tools like Turbo integrate easily with its monorepo features.

One regretful thing is that Yarn PnP is not widely supported, which does not allow us to fully use Zero-installs/PnP for even faster builds and a better developer experience.

11.2k views11.2k
Comments
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
Sub
Sub

Developer

Jan 5, 2022

Review

I don't think there's a decision to be made, aren't they different products and services? GitHub is traditionally an online repository based around Git versioning. GitHub have expanded into other things since Microsoft came in though. Nevertheless I recommend seriously taking the time to work through the very steep learning curve of setting up a local development environment. You could start by using Visual Studio Code and get a free GitHub account to push your private projects onto. If anything it'll be a free offsite backup of your work. You'll need to install Git to take care of your local repository as well as NPM and also look at Yarn. Have this on your priority list, do some research, gather links, tutorials, downloads etc and take a week out to get it done when you feel you're at the stage where you'd like to be more organised. You could start by trying VSCode see whether you like the features and using it as an editor. Look at other editors and so on.

663 views663
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Browserify
Browserify
npm
npm

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

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.

Use a node-style require() to organize your browser code and load modules installed by npm.;browserify will recursively analyze all the require() calls in your app in order to build a bundle you can serve up to the browser in a single script tag.
-
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
17.6K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
3.0K
Stacks
2.2K
Stacks
137.4K
Followers
414
Followers
82.2K
Votes
261
Votes
1.6K
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 75
    Node style browser code
  • 52
    Load modules installed by npm
  • 45
    Works great with gulp.js
  • 38
    NPM modules in the brower
  • 34
    Open source
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

What are some alternatives to Browserify, npm?

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.

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.

Component

Component

Component's philosophy is the UNIX philosophy of the web - to create a platform for small, reusable components that consist of JS, CSS, HTML, images, fonts, etc. With its well-defined specs, using Component means not worrying about most frontend problems such as package management, publishing components to a registry, or creating a custom build process for every single app.

Verdaccio

Verdaccio

A simple, zero-config-required local private npm registry. Comes out of the box with its own tiny database, and the ability to proxy other registries (eg. npmjs.org), caching the downloaded modules along the way.

pip

pip

It is the package installer for Python. You can use pip to install packages from the Python Package Index and other indexes.

Duo

Duo

Duo is a next-generation package manager that blends the best ideas from Component, Browserify and Go to make organizing and writing front-end code quick and painless.

Pika.dev

Pika.dev

It is a new kind of package registry for the modern web. It handles formatting, configuring, building and publishing every package on the registry, so that individual authors don't have to.

Bundler

Bundler

It provides a consistent environment for Ruby projects by tracking and installing the exact gems and versions that are needed. It is an exit from dependency hell, and ensures that the gems you need are present in development, staging, and production.

Browserify-CDN

Browserify-CDN

Browsers don't have the require method defined, but Node.js does. With Browserify you can write code that uses require in the same way that you would use it in Node.

Entropic

Entropic

It is a new package registry with a new CLI, designed to be easy to stand up inside your network. It features an entirely new file-centric API and a content-addressable storage system that attempts to minimize the amount of data you must retrieve over a network. This file-centric approach also applies to the publication API.

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