npm weekly #27: NodeRedis, dependencies, and the French

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a story about module stewardship

Today in good news you can use, a neat story about NodeRedis.

A while back, Matt Ranney gave the module redis to the community. Just this week, contributors got the first release in a year out the door.

It’s great work by the team, and also a great reminder that if you don’t have the time to maintain something anymore, the npm community is here to help.

Moving your module into a GitHub organization is a useful first step; then email your main contributors and give them ownership on npm and commit access on GitHub. It turns out that being given ownership in a project helps contributors feel proud to jump in and help. Win!

Have an orphan project in need of adoption? Tell us.

un discours sur les npm

We didn’t get Jon Q to draw us a wombat avec baguette, but don’t let that stop you. If you find yourself in Toulouse next week, don’t miss Maxime Warnier’s talk at Tolouse JS: npm: et s'il ne devait en rester qu'un (“npm: There Can Be Only One” — Highlander jokes transcend borders and tongues).

The talk is Tuesday, September 8th in Toulouse; tickets (free!) are on Eventbrite. Send a postcard.

(And: giving a talk about npm? Don’t forget to tell us; we’ll help spread the word.)

a word on dependencies

You: have always wanted to know which versions of your npm package the world is using, and view npm packages and their dependencies as a graph.

npmrank: uses PageRank to identify popular or important packages. There’s a neat online demo to sort packages by PageRank, and Andrei also gave us a rundown of the top 100 packages with the most dependencies and the top 100 packages upon which the most other packages depend.

Check it out.

a picture of dependencies

npm2dot converts an npm dependency list to a dot file so you can visualize it in Graphviz. Pretty! It’s also a neat way to see what we mean when we say that npm 3 (coming soon!) flattens dependencies:

On the left, a package’s dependencies installed using npm’s current version. On the right, the same dependencies installed using npm 3: it’s easy to see a flatter structure and fewer nodes.

For a good time, try using this to compare Express’ development environment and production environment:

an appeal for Private Modules users

Are you as brave as @therockywounded? As strong as @danmactough? As noble as @AaronMakeStuff? Yes. Yes, you are.

Are you also a heavy user of npm Private Modules? Our own Nick Cawthon is working on improvements to publishing and managing private modules, and needs your help. Sign up here for a 30-minute usability session to influence the product and score neat stuff.

oh-oh-oh-Oakland, get down

This week the Weekly is a little thin, and a little late, because we’ve been busily relocating to npm’s new world headquarters along Lake Merritt in Uptown Oakland.

The move reflects our growth to 23 humans — and counting — and gives us space for more classes, events, and wombat petting zoos. If you’re in the area, let’s chill.

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