npm weekly #88: How Slack uses npm, marky-markdown’s new editor, plus something is finally making fetch happen
How does Slack use npm? (How can you?)
Our series of chats with npm Enterprise and private package customers continues this week with Customer Convos: Paul Betts of Slack. In this convo, Paul talks about how Slack has benefited from private packages by creatively using npm as a C++ package system, wrapping WebRTC versions into npm packages.
Slack also supports open source work, having created a desktop app utilizing many OSS technologies. Paul even wrote a post calling to attention the public Slack npm packages that they’ve built, along with other open source tools Slack uses.
Help make fetch happen!
Fans of Mean Girls canon will immediately recognize this phrase, but for others basically the only thing you need to know is that naming npm modules can be an art form, creating layers upon layers of delight.
The new module make-fetch-happen is a work in progress, but is seeking contributors to help build a Node.js library that implements the fetch API in a Node.js-specific way.
What we’re reading: Becoming An Efficient and Successful Technologist
If you aren’t reading everything from the author of the successful and efficient nonexistent LinkedIn™ blog, “How To Be Successful Without People, Food, or Clothing,” you are essentially wasting your life.
Read this immediately: Becoming An Efficient and Successful Technologist by Jenn Schiffer.
ICYMI: follow up on the replication lag on publications
Late last week, we ran into an issue where there was a lag on replicating publications because of a bug within CouchDB. The issue was resolved within a few hours. For up-to-date status notifications, make sure you’re following @npmstatus on Twitter.
Test your READMEs with marky-markdown’s live editor
Last week Revin Guillen answered the question, “Ever wondered how your docs will render on npm but didn’t want to publish to find out?” Because: now you can, with marky-markdown tester. The tester uses the same renderer as npm’s, so you can preview your package details and README gifs with confidence.
Two new npm releases to enjoy
Late last week the npm CLI team released two new versions, v.2.15.12 and v.4.5.0. Version 2.15.12 updated node-gyp to add Visual Studio 2017 support — key for Windows users.
Version 4.5.0 reduced package metadata. For example, npm itself it reduces 416K of gzip compressed JSON to 24K. There were also some bugfixes, and for the full details read the release notes.
npm 💖💖💖 Next.js 2.0
Earlier this week ZEIT announced the release of Next.js 2.0 and even gave npm a shout out as production users. This next¹ release adds some very sleek new features like component CSS support, a more programmatic API, more React hacks, and Next News, a better version of that one orange news site. Check it out!
¹ Sorry, not sorry, for the pun. — Ed.
npm in the news
After our free Orgs announcement last week the folks at InfoWorld wrote up a piece, Open source JavaScript, Node.js devs get npm Orgs for free, as did D-Zone: Free npm Orgs Shared to World’s Largest Software Registry. World’s largest? *blush*
npm delivers more than one type of package
The folks at NodeConf Barcelona recently took to Twitter to share a different type of package npm delivered to them. NodeConf Barcelona takes place next Friday (and tickets are still available!) and attendees might just spy some npm swag at the event.
Get free socks! Just fix some bugs.
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