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Create React App

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Create React App vs npm: What are the differences?

Introduction

Create React App and npm are both tools used in web development, but they serve different purposes. Create React App is a tool that allows developers to quickly set up a development environment for building React applications, providing a pre-configured project structure and build tools. On the other hand, npm (Node Package Manager) is a package manager for Node.js that allows developers to install and manage third-party libraries and dependencies.

  1. Project Setup: Create React App provides a pre-configured project setup including a build toolchain, webpack configuration, and a development server. It simplifies the initial setup process, allowing developers to focus on writing code. In contrast, npm does not provide a pre-configured project setup but instead focuses on managing dependencies and installing packages required for the development process.

  2. Usage: Create React App is specifically designed for building React applications. It provides a single command to start the development server, build the project for production, and deploy it. It enables developers to quickly create and test React components and integrate them into a larger application. On the other hand, npm is a general-purpose package manager and is not limited to React applications. It can be used for managing dependencies in any Node.js project, regardless of the framework being used.

  3. Configuration: Create React App abstracts away the configuration process by providing sensible defaults. It minimizes the need for manual configuration, allowing developers to focus on writing code. In contrast, npm requires developers to manually configure their project by specifying dependencies in a package.json file and managing scripts for various tasks such as building and testing.

  4. Updates and Maintenance: Create React App simplifies the process of updating and maintaining the development environment. It provides an upgrade tool that helps to keep the project up to date with the latest changes in React ecosystem. On the other hand, npm provides tools like npm audit for identifying and fixing vulnerabilities in dependencies, but it does not specifically focus on maintaining the development environment itself.

  5. Community and Support: Create React App has a large and active community of developers, providing resources, documentation, and support for building React applications. It has frequent updates and releases, ensuring compatibility with the latest React features. While npm also has a large community, its focus is more on managing packages and dependencies, rather than providing specific support for React development.

  6. Integrations: Create React App is tightly integrated with the React ecosystem and provides an optimized development experience for building React applications. It includes features like hot module replacement, code splitting, and tree shaking out of the box. In contrast, npm can be used with any Node.js project, regardless of the framework being used, and does not provide specific optimizations for React development.

In summary, Create React App simplifies the setup and configuration process for building React applications, while npm is a general-purpose package manager for managing dependencies in any Node.js project.

Advice on Create React App and npm
Needs advice
on
npmnpm
and
YarnYarn

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?"

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Replies (14)
Julian Sanchez
Lead Developer at Chore Champion · | 11 upvotes · 239.7K views
Recommends
on
YarnYarn
at

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).

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Recommends
on
npmnpm

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.

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Recommends
on
YarnYarn

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.

------⏬

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...

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Mark Nelissen
Recommends
on
npmnpmnpmnpm

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.

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Recommends
on
YarnYarn

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. :)

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tataata
Frontend designer and developer · | 3 upvotes · 225.1K views
Recommends
on
YarnYarn

Yarn made it painless for the team to sync on versions of packages that we use on the project <3

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Shuuji TAKAHASHI
Recommends
on
YarnYarn

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.

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Recommends
on
npmnpm

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!

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Izzur Zuhri
Recommends
on
npmnpm

I use npm because it has a lot of community support and the performance difference with alternative tool is not so significant for me.

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Tor Hagemann
Principal Software Engineer at Socotra · | 3 upvotes · 125.3K views
Recommends
on
npmnpmYarnYarn

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.

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Denys Slipetskyy
Recommends
on
YarnYarn
at

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) ...

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Francois Leurent
Recommends
on
npmnpm
at

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.

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Recommends
on
YarnYarn

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

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Digital All
Recommends
on
npmnpm

I use npm because its packaged with node installation and handles npm tokens in CI/CD tools for private packages/libraries.

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Decisions about Create React App and npm
Oleksandr Fedotov
Senior Software Engineer at joyn · | 3 upvotes · 265.4K views

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.

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Petr Bambušek
Head of Frontend at Mews · | 2 upvotes · 276.1K views
Chose
YarnYarn
over
npmnpm
at
()

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.

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Pros of Create React App
Pros of npm
  • 2
    No config, easy to use
  • 2
    Maintained by React core team
  • 647
    Best package management system for javascript
  • 382
    Open-source
  • 327
    Great community
  • 148
    More packages than rubygems, pypi, or packagist
  • 112
    Nice people matter
  • 6
    As fast as yarn but really free of facebook
  • 6
    Audit feature
  • 4
    Good following
  • 1
    Super fast
  • 1
    Stability

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Cons of Create React App
Cons of npm
  • 1
    No SSR
  • 5
    Problems with lockfiles
  • 5
    Bad at package versioning and being deterministic
  • 3
    Node-gyp takes forever
  • 1
    Super slow

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- No public GitHub repository available -

What is Create React App?

Create React apps with no build configuration.

What is npm?

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.

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What are some alternatives to Create React App and npm?
Next.js
Next.js is a minimalistic framework for server-rendered React applications.
Create React Native App
Create React Native App allows you to work with all of the Components and APIs in React Native, as well as most of the JavaScript APIs that the Expo App provides.
Expo
It is a framework and a platform for universal React applications. It is a set of tools and services built around React Native and native platforms that help you develop, build, deploy, and quickly iterate on iOS, Android, and web apps.
Brunch
Brunch is an assembler for HTML5 applications. It's agnostic to frameworks, libraries, programming, stylesheet & templating languages and backend technology.
React Native
React Native enables you to build world-class application experiences on native platforms using a consistent developer experience based on JavaScript and React. The focus of React Native is on developer efficiency across all the platforms you care about - learn once, write anywhere. Facebook uses React Native in multiple production apps and will continue investing in React Native.
See all alternatives