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Bitbucket vs npm: What are the differences?
Introduction
In this article, we will compare Bitbucket and npm, two popular platforms used in the software development industry. We will highlight the key differences between these two platforms and provide insights into their unique features and functionalities.
Version Control System (VCS) vs Package Manager: Bitbucket is primarily a web-based version control repository that allows developers to host and manage their source code repositories. It provides features like branch management, code collaboration, and code review. On the other hand, npm is a package manager that enables developers to discover, share, and reuse JavaScript packages. It simplifies dependency management by providing a vast ecosystem of packages for different purposes.
Code Hosting vs Package Publishing: Bitbucket focuses on hosting code repositories, allowing teams to collaborate on projects and manage their software development workflow effectively. It provides features like pull requests, continuous integration, and issue tracking. In contrast, npm is primarily used for publishing and distributing JavaScript packages. It offers a centralized registry, package versioning, and command-line tools to install and manage packages.
Project Management vs Dependency Management: Bitbucket provides tools for project management and collaboration, such as issue tracking, task boards, and project wikis. It allows teams to organize and track their work, plan releases, and keep track of project milestones. In contrast, npm focuses on dependency management, helping developers handle and resolve dependencies within their projects by managing package versions and maintaining a package-lock file.
Support for Multiple Programming Languages: Bitbucket supports multiple programming languages and version control systems, including Git and Mercurial. This versatility enables developers to choose the tools and technologies that best suit their projects. In contrast, npm is primarily used for JavaScript package management and is widely adopted in the JavaScript ecosystem.
Integration with CI/CD Tools vs Automation in Build Process: Bitbucket integrates seamlessly with popular CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment) tools like Jenkins, Bamboo, and AWS CodePipeline. This allows for automated builds, testing, and deployment processes. On the other hand, npm provides various scripts and commands in the package.json file, allowing developers to automate tasks like building, testing, and publishing packages.
Access Control and Collaboration: Bitbucket offers robust access control mechanisms, allowing teams to manage permissions, restrict access to repositories, and enforce code review and approval workflows. It facilitates collaboration among team members by providing features like pull requests and inline commenting. In contrast, npm packages are usually publicly available on the npm registry, but publishers can set access controls for private packages, limiting their availability to authorized users.
In summary, Bitbucket is primarily a version control repository with project management features, supporting multiple programming languages and offering integration with CI/CD tools. On the other hand, npm is a package manager focused on dependency management and package publishing specifically for JavaScript packages.
We are using a Bitbucket server, and due to migration efforts and new Atlassian community license changes, we need to move to a new self-hosted solution. The new data-center license for Atlassian, available in February, will be community provisioned (free). Along with that community license, other technologies will be coming with it (Crucible, Confluence, and Jira). Is there value in a paid-for license to get the GitHub Enterprise? Are the tools that come with it worth the cost?
I know it is about $20 per 10 seats, and we have about 300 users. Have other convertees to Microsoft's tools found it easy to do a migration? Is the toolset that much more beneficial to the free suite that one can get from Atlassian?
So far, free seems to be the winner, and the familiarization with Atlassian implementation and maintenance is understood. Going to GitHub, are there any distinct challenges to be found or any perks to be attained?
These are pretty competitive, and to recommend one over the other would require understanding your usage. Also, what other tools you use: for instance, what do you use for Issue-tracking, or for build pipelines. In your case, since you are already using Bitbucket, the question would be: do you have any current pain-points? And, on the other hand, do you already use Atlassian's JIRA, where you'd benefit from the tight integration? So, though I would not recommend one over the other just in general,. But, if Bitbucket fulfills your current use-cases, then there seems to be little motivation to move.
Hi, I need advice. In my project, we are using Bitbucket hosted on-prem, Jenkins, and Jira. Also, we have restrictions not to use any plugins for code review, code quality, code security, etc., with bitbucket. Now we want to migrate to AWS CodeCommit, which would mean that we can use, let's say, Amazon CodeGuru for code reviews and move to AWS CodeBuild and AWS CodePipeline for build automation in the future rather than using Jenkins.
Now I want advice on below.
- Is it a good idea to migrate from Bitbucket to AWS Codecommit?
- If we want to integrate Jira with AWS Codecommit, then how can we do this? If a developer makes any changes in Jira, then a build should be triggered automatically in AWS and create a Jira ticket if the build fails. So, how can we achieve this?
Hi Kavita. It would be useful to explain in a bit more detail the integration to Jira you would like to achieve. Some of the Jira plugins will work with any git repository, regardless if its github/bitbucket/gitlab.
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?"
We use Yarn because it allows us to more simply manage our node_modules. It also simplifies commands and increases speed when installing modules. Our teams module download time was cut in half after switching from NPM to Yarn. We now require all employees to use Yarn (to prevent errors with package-lock.json and yarn.lock).
I use npm since new version is pretty fast as well (Yarn may be still faster a bit but the difference isn't huge). No need for other dependency and mainly Yarn sometimes do not work. Sometimes when I want to install project dependencies I got error using Yarn but with npm everything is installed correctly.
p.s.
I am not sure about the performance of the latest version of npm, whether it is different from my understanding of it below. Because I use npm very rarely when I had the following knowledge.
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I use Yarn because, first, yarn is the first tool to lock the version. Second, although npm also supports the lock version, when you use npm to lock the version, and then use package-lock.json on other systems, package-lock.json Will be modified. You understand what I mean, when you deploy projects based on Git...
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.
As far as I know Yarn is a super module of NPM. But it still needs npm to run.
Yarn was developed by Facebook's guys to fix some npm issues and performance.
If you use the last version of npm most of this problem does not exist anymore.
You can choose the option which makes you more confortable. I like using yarn because I'm used to it.
In the end the packages will be the same. Just try both and choose the one you feel more confortable. :)
I am a minimalist too. I once had issues with installing Nuxt.js using NPM so I had to install Yarn but I also found that the Dev experience was much better
I use npm because its packaged with node installation and handles npm tokens in CI/CD tools for private packages/libraries.
We tend to stick to npm, yarn is only a fancy alternative, not 10x better. Using a self -hosted private repository (via sinopia/npm-mirror) make package locking (mostly) pointless.
Yarn made it painless for the team to sync on versions of packages that we use on the project <3
I use Yarn because it outputs nice progress messages with cute emoji and installs packages quickly if the package is cached. Also, Yarn creates yarn.lock
file which makes the developer use the consistent environment.
I use npm because its the official package manager for Node. It's reliability, security and speed has increased over time so the battle is over!
I use Yarn because it process my dependencies way faster, predictable deps resolution order, upgrade-interactive is very handy + some Yarn specific features (workspaces, Plug’n’Play alternative installation strategy) ...
I use npm because it has a lot of community support and the performance difference with alternative tool is not so significant for me.
You should use whichever had the best DX (developer experience) for your team. If you are doing a massive front-end project, consider yarn if not only because it makes it a snap to go from zero to ready. What some people say about npm
being more stable or easier for smaller projects is highly true as well. (not to mention, you sometimes have to install yarn) But, note that official NodeJS Docker images ship with both npm and yarn. If you want to use yarn, put package-lock=false
and optionally save-exact=true
in your project's .npmrc
file. Compare whether you prefer the ergonomics of yarn global add
over npm install -g
or see fewer meaningless warnings for the specific set of dependencies you leverage.
I first used BitBucket because it had private repo's, and it didn't disappoint me. Also with the smooth integration of Jira, the decision to use BitBucket as a full application maintenance service was as easy as 1, 2, 3.
I honestly love BitBucket, by the looks, by the UI, and the smooth integration with Tower.
Do you review your Pull/Merge Request before assigning Reviewers?
If you work in a team opening a Pull Request (or Merge Request) looks appropriate. However, have you ever thought about opening a Pull/Merge Request when working by yourself? Here's a checklist of things you can review in your own:
- Pick the correct target branch
- Make Drafts explicit
- Name things properly
- Ask help for tools
- Remove the noise
- Fetch necessary data
- Understand Mergeability
- Pass the message
- Add screenshots
- Be found in the future
- Comment inline in your changes
Read the blog post for more detailed explanation for each item :D
What else do you review before asking for code review?
One of the magic tricks git performs is the ability to rewrite log history. You can do it in many ways, but git rebase -i
is the one I most use. With this command, It’s possible to switch commits order, remove a commit, squash two or more commits, or edit, for instance.
It’s particularly useful to run it before opening a pull request. It allows developers to “clean up” the mess and organize commits before submitting to review. If you follow the practice 3 and 4, then the list of commits should look very similar to a task list. It should reveal the rationale you had, telling the story of how you end up with that final code.
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.
This was no real choice - we switched the moment Yarn was available, and never looked back. Yarn is the only reasonable frontend package manager that's actually being developed. They even aim to heal the node_modules madness with v2! Npm is just copying its ideas on top of introducing massive bugs with every change.
Pros of Bitbucket
- Free private repos905
- Simple setup397
- Nice ui and tools349
- Unlimited private repositories342
- Affordable git hosting240
- Integrates with many apis and services123
- Reliable uptime119
- Nice gui87
- Pull requests and code reviews85
- Very customisable58
- Mercurial repositories16
- SourceTree integration14
- JIRA integration12
- Track every commit to an issue in JIRA10
- Deployment hooks8
- Best free alternative to Github8
- Automatically share repositories with all your teammates7
- Source Code Insight7
- Compatible with Mac and Windows7
- Price6
- Login with Google5
- Create a wiki5
- Approve pull request button5
- Customizable pipelines4
- #2 Atlassian Product after JIRA4
- Unlimited Private Repos at no cost3
- Also supports Mercurial3
- Continuous Integration and Delivery3
- Mercurial Support2
- Multilingual interface2
- Teamcity2
- Open source friendly2
- Issues tracker2
- IAM2
- Academic license program2
- IAM integration2
Pros of npm
- Best package management system for javascript648
- Open-source382
- Great community327
- More packages than rubygems, pypi, or packagist148
- Nice people matter112
- As fast as yarn but really free of facebook6
- Audit feature6
- Good following4
- Super fast1
- Stability1
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Cons of Bitbucket
- Not much community activity19
- Difficult to review prs because of confusing ui17
- Quite buggy15
- Managed by enterprise Java company10
- CI tool is not free of charge8
- Complexity with rights management7
- Only 5 collaborators for private repos6
- Slow performance4
- No AWS Codepipelines integration2
- No more Mercurial repositories1
- No server side git-hook support1
Cons of npm
- Problems with lockfiles5
- Bad at package versioning and being deterministic5
- Node-gyp takes forever3
- Super slow1