[Pkg-javascript-devel] packaging node applications in Debian

[Jérémy Lal]

On 04/10/2011 13:28, Florian Brandes wrote:
> Am Dienstag, den 04.10.2011, 11:29 +0200 schrieb Jonas Smedegaard:
> 
>> On 11-10-04 at 11:18am, Florian Brandes wrote:
>>> Forever depends on 12 other packages. I really wouldn't want to pack 
>>> 12 other packages (and possibly there dependencies as well).
>>
>> Then you really are not trying to debianize a Node package, as you wrote 
>> initially.
> 
> Maybe you're right, but I thought creating a working .deb file, which
> installs correctly on a debian (-derived) system would be called
> "debianize". I am sorry if I have incorrectly used it. 
> 
>>> I read about the npm bundle command. Could I use that to "bundle" all 
>>> what is required by forever and pack that?
>>
>> You can do many things, and maybe that one too.  But if you want to 
>> package Debian packages, then avoid npm!
>>
> 
> If I understood correctly, to "debianize" forever, I would have to
> "debianize" all of its dependencies, right? Therefore I would replace
> node package management by debian package management. 
> 
> It would probably be best to have npm installed and get those packages
> installed through it and not through debian package management. 
> 
> I looked at other libnode* packages and they appear to have less (or
> none) dependencies. Packaging 12 packages for only one package to work
> seems rather...cumbersome.

This is troublesome for me, too.
Hell, even npm itself has its dozen dependencies...
I feel there is something wrong with blindly making debian packages out of those.

I'm trying to find good arguments against that practice :
* too small packages - sometimes even only a few lines of code
* most of the time, only one dependency
* anyone can make a package in npm repository. Even if it's a package
  nobody but its author will ever use. There is no quality checks.

An example :
http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs/msg/42947c291c5f31f3
Isaac states he doesn't really want people to use its "slide" package.
Does it really make sense to do a debian package out of that small, single,
probably unmaintained, file ?

A tool that might help tracking dependencies and packages of interest :)
https://github.com/substack/npmdep

Jérémy.