Angular CLI vs npm

Overview

npm

Stacks137.4K

Followers82.2K

Votes1.6K

GitHub Stars17.6K

Forks3.0K

Angular CLI

Stacks886

Followers744

Votes0

GitHub Stars27.0K

Forks11.9K

Angular CLI vs npm: What are the differences?

Introduction

Angular CLI and npm are commonly used in web development, but they serve different purposes and have distinct functionalities. Understanding the key differences between Angular CLI and npm is crucial for web developers to effectively manage their projects.

Angular CLI: Angular CLI (Command Line Interface) is a powerful tool that simplifies the development process for Angular applications. It provides a command line interface to create and manage Angular projects, components, services, modules, and other Angular-related features. Angular CLI comes with pre-configured templates and code generators that make it easier for developers to scaffold the structure of an Angular application.
npm: npm (Node Package Manager) is a package manager for JavaScript and Node.js. It allows developers to manage and install external libraries, frameworks, and dependencies for their projects. npm is primarily used for installing and updating packages, managing project dependencies, and running scripts defined in the package.json file. It also provides a registry where developers can publish their own packages for widespread use.
Installation and Usage: Angular CLI needs to be installed globally on the system using npm. Once installed, developers can create a new Angular project by running the "ng new" command. On the other hand, npm is installed globally by default when Node.js is installed. It can be used directly from the command line to install packages by running the "npm install" command followed by the package name.
Project Configuration: Angular CLI provides a structured project setup with pre-configured files and folders, including the angular.json file for project configuration. It also offers a command line interface to generate components, services, and modules automatically. npm, on the other hand, does not provide any project structure or configuration. It relies on the package.json file to define project dependencies, scripts, and other metadata.
Dependency Management: Angular CLI uses npm as its package manager for managing project dependencies. When creating a new Angular project using Angular CLI, the package.json file is automatically generated with default dependencies. Developers can use the "ng add" command to add additional dependencies to the project. npm, on the other hand, is the actual package manager that handles the installation, updating, and uninstallation of packages. Developers can use npm to install packages by running the "npm install" command followed by the package name.
Command Line Interface: Angular CLI provides a specific set of commands and options for managing Angular projects. It offers commands like "ng serve," "ng build," and "ng test" for running the development server, building the project, and running tests, respectively. npm, on the other hand, provides a wider range of commands and options for general package management, including "npm start," "npm run build," and "npm test" for running scripts defined in the package.json file.

In summary, Angular CLI is a tool specifically designed for creating and managing Angular projects, providing features like project scaffolding, code generation, and a specific set of commands for managing Angular applications. On the other hand, npm is a general-purpose package manager for JavaScript and Node.js, used for installing, updating, and managing project dependencies and running scripts defined in the package.json file.

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CLI (Node.js)

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Advice on npm, Angular CLI

StackShare

Apr 23, 2019

Needs adviceon

Node.js

npm

Yarn

From a StackShare Community member: “I’m a freelance web developer (I mostly use Node.js) and for future projects I’m debating between npm or Yarn as my default package manager. I’m a minimalist so I hate installing software if I don’t need to- in this case that would be Yarn. For those who made the switch from npm to Yarn, what benefits have you noticed? For those who stuck with npm, are you happy you with it?"

294k views294k

Comments

Mark

CTO at Gemsotec bvba

Apr 25, 2019

Reviewon

React

TypeScript

Yarn

I use npm because I also mainly use React and TypeScript. Since several typings (from DefinitelyTyped) depend on the React typings, Yarn tends to mess up which leads to duplicate libraries present (different versions of the same type definition), which hinders the Typescript compiler. Npm always resolves to a single version per transitive dependency. At least that's my experience with both.

251k views251k

Comments

Oleksandr

Senior Software Engineer at joyn

Dec 7, 2019

Decided

As we have to build the application for many different TV platforms we want to split the application logic from the device/platform specific code. Previously we had different repositories and it was very hard to keep the development process when changes were done in multiple repositories, as we had to synchronize code reviews as well as merging and then updating the dependencies of projects. This issues would be even more critical when building the project from scratch what we did at Joyn. Therefor to keep all code in one place, at the same time keeping in separated in different modules we decided to give a try to monorepo. First we tried out lerna which was fine at the beginning, but later along the way we had issues with adding new dependencies which came out of the blue and were not easy to fix. Next round of evolution was yarn workspaces, we are still using it and are pretty happy with dev experience it provides. And one more advantage we got when switched to yarn workspaces that we also switched from npm to yarn what improved the state of the lock file a lot, because with npm package-lock file was updated every time you run npm install, frequent updates of package-lock file were causing very often merge conflicts. So right now we not just having faster dependencies installation time but also no conflicts coming from lock file.

310k views310k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

npm	Angular CLI
npm is the command-line interface to the npm ecosystem. It is battle-tested, surprisingly flexible, and used by hundreds of thousands of JavaScript developers every day.	A command-line interface tool that you use to initialize, develop, scaffold, and maintain Angular applications. You can use the tool directly in a command shell, or indirectly through an interactive UI such as Angular Console.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 17.6K	GitHub Stars 27.0K
GitHub Forks 3.0K	GitHub Forks 11.9K
Stacks 137.4K	Stacks 886
Followers 82.2K	Followers 744
Votes 1.6K	Votes 0
Pros & Cons
Pros 648 Best package management system for javascript 382 Open-source 327 Great community 148 More packages than rubygems, pypi, or packagist 112 Nice people matter Cons 5 Bad at package versioning and being deterministic 5 Problems with lockfiles 3 Node-gyp takes forever 1 Super slow	No community feedback yet
Integrations
No integrations available	AngularJS Angular

What are some alternatives to npm, Angular CLI?

RequireJS

RequireJS loads plain JavaScript files as well as more defined modules. It is optimized for in-browser use, including in a Web Worker, but it can be used in other JavaScript environments, like Rhino and Node. It implements the Asynchronous Module API. Using a modular script loader like RequireJS will improve the speed and quality of your code.

Browserify

Browserify lets you require('modules') in the browser by bundling up all of your dependencies.

Ant Design

An enterprise-class UI design language and React-based implementation. Graceful UI components out of the box, base on React Component. A npm + webpack + babel + dora + dva development framework.

Yarn

Yarn caches every package it downloads so it never needs to again. It also parallelizes operations to maximize resource utilization so install times are faster than ever.

Angular Universal

It executes on the server, generating static application pages that later get bootstrapped on the client. This means that the application generally renders more quickly, giving users a chance to view the application layout before it becomes fully interactive.

Angular Material

Sprint from Zero to App. Hit the ground running with comprehensive, modern UI components that work across the web, mobile and desktop. It allows to create material styled angular apps fast and easy.

Component

Component's philosophy is the UNIX philosophy of the web - to create a platform for small, reusable components that consist of JS, CSS, HTML, images, fonts, etc. With its well-defined specs, using Component means not worrying about most frontend problems such as package management, publishing components to a registry, or creating a custom build process for every single app.

PrimeReact

PrimeReact is a rich set of open source UI Components for React.

React Router

React Router is a complete routing solution designed specifically for React.js. It painlessly synchronizes the components of your application with the URL, with first-class support for nesting, transitions, and server side rendering.

styled-components

Visual primitives for the component age. Use the best bits of ES6 and CSS to style your apps without stress 💅

Related Comparisons

Angular CLI vs npm: What are the differences?

Introduction

Angular CLI: Angular CLI (Command Line Interface) is a powerful tool that simplifies the development process for Angular applications. It provides a command line interface to create and manage Angular projects, components, services, modules, and other Angular-related features. Angular CLI comes with pre-configured templates and code generators that make it easier for developers to scaffold the structure of an Angular application.
npm: npm (Node Package Manager) is a package manager for JavaScript and Node.js. It allows developers to manage and install external libraries, frameworks, and dependencies for their projects. npm is primarily used for installing and updating packages, managing project dependencies, and running scripts defined in the package.json file. It also provides a registry where developers can publish their own packages for widespread use.
Installation and Usage: Angular CLI needs to be installed globally on the system using npm. Once installed, developers can create a new Angular project by running the "ng new" command. On the other hand, npm is installed globally by default when Node.js is installed. It can be used directly from the command line to install packages by running the "npm install" command followed by the package name.
Project Configuration: Angular CLI provides a structured project setup with pre-configured files and folders, including the angular.json file for project configuration. It also offers a command line interface to generate components, services, and modules automatically. npm, on the other hand, does not provide any project structure or configuration. It relies on the package.json file to define project dependencies, scripts, and other metadata.
Dependency Management: Angular CLI uses npm as its package manager for managing project dependencies. When creating a new Angular project using Angular CLI, the package.json file is automatically generated with default dependencies. Developers can use the "ng add" command to add additional dependencies to the project. npm, on the other hand, is the actual package manager that handles the installation, updating, and uninstallation of packages. Developers can use npm to install packages by running the "npm install" command followed by the package name.
Command Line Interface: Angular CLI provides a specific set of commands and options for managing Angular projects. It offers commands like "ng serve," "ng build," and "ng test" for running the development server, building the project, and running tests, respectively. npm, on the other hand, provides a wider range of commands and options for general package management, including "npm start," "npm run build," and "npm test" for running scripts defined in the package.json file.

Angular CLI vs npm

Overview