After a year of using Node.js in production

Re:After a year of using Node.js in production by Touche on Monday May 02, 2016 @06:59PM (#11616431)

It's an inflated example of what all npm script projects become, imo. First you just have "test", then you add "build", then you separate your "test" into one for the browser, one for Node, one for CI, then you need scripts that combine those together; then you create different "start" versions depending on environment... It blows up quickly.

> Npm scripts are really just shell scripting, which means all the real progress happens in the unixy Node tools that do the heavy lifting, where it should be.

That's fine, but you're missing critical features that Make provides; make won't even rebuild a target if no files have changed.

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Re:After a year of using Node.js in production by Wintamute on Tuesday May 03, 2016 @05:30AM (#11619081)

Admittedly, my first 2 or 3 npm scripts based build processes did start to get a bit ugly. But I'm much better at writing them now, so they stay pretty sane.

> That's fine, but you're missing critical features that Make provides; make won't even rebuild a target if no files have changed.

WebPack does this for me too. Also my ava tests don't rerun for files that haven't changed while watching.

Genuinely curious, what scenarios precisely do you find this feature of Make useful?

Also, Make isn't truly cross platform ... and since I sometimes work with Windows devs this would be a problem.

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Re:After a year of using Node.js in production by krisdol on Monday May 02, 2016 @10:31PM (#11617419)

I completely disagree that this is what all npm scripts become

>then you separate your "test" into one for the browser, one for Node, one for CI,

For the love of God why. Don't turn every language into Java.

Plenty of tools will not rebuilt a project if no files have changed, but the dumb, quick and easy way that requires no deendendencies is simply to delete and rebuild.

The fact that this functionality is served so well by a simple dependency shows that you don't need overly complex monolithic tools to accomplish small tasks.

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Re:After a year of using Node.js in production by krisdol on Monday May 02, 2016 @10:29PM (#11617404)

I completely disagree that this is what all npm scripts become

>then you separate your "test" into one for the browser, one for Node, one for CI,

For the love of God why. Don't turn every language into Java

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