Re:Crom – A package manager without the package registry
by mbostock on Monday January 25, 2016 @08:27PM
(#10971323)
It’s hard to tell how much overlap there is.
One of way of looking at Crom is that it provides a more convenient interface than a URL, yet without the centralization that comes from using names in a registry.
Crom helps you go from a name to a URL (via search heuristics), but it’s the URL that ultimately serves as the identifier. So, if you author a package.json with a name like “d3-format”, that gets expanded to a full URL, perhaps with interactive confirmation. (Or not, because it’s trivial to undo and redo.)
Also, unlike a URL to the ZIP file directly, a package URL in Crom supports semantic versioning: it refers to all versions of a project, and thus you can upgrade or specify a desired version range.
One of way of looking at Crom is that it provides a more convenient interface than a URL, yet without the centralization that comes from using names in a registry.
Crom helps you go from a name to a URL (via search heuristics), but it’s the URL that ultimately serves as the identifier. So, if you author a package.json with a name like “d3-format”, that gets expanded to a full URL, perhaps with interactive confirmation. (Or not, because it’s trivial to undo and redo.)
Also, unlike a URL to the ZIP file directly, a package URL in Crom supports semantic versioning: it refers to all versions of a project, and thus you can upgrade or specify a desired version range.