Packer vs npm

Overview

Packer

Stacks573

Followers566

Votes41

npm

Stacks137.4K

Followers82.2K

Votes1.6K

GitHub Stars17.6K

Forks3.0K

Packer vs npm: What are the differences?

Installation Process: Packer is a tool for creating identical machine images for multiple platforms, while npm is a package manager for Node.js. Packer needs to be downloaded and installed separately, whereas npm comes bundled with Node.js.
Purpose: Packer is primarily used for building and deploying machine images, while npm is specifically designed for managing Node.js packages and dependencies. Packer focuses on infrastructure automation, while npm focuses on package management within the Node.js ecosystem.
Support: Packer supports multiple cloud providers and virtualization platforms, allowing users to create images for various environments. On the other hand, npm is dedicated to managing Node.js dependencies and does not have functionality related to creating machine images for different platforms.
Configuration: Packer uses JSON configuration files to define the creation of machine images, specifying builders, provisioners, and post-processors. In contrast, npm utilizes a package.json file to list dependencies, scripts, and metadata related to a Node.js project.
Community: Packer has a smaller community compared to npm, as it caters to a niche audience interested in infrastructure automation. npm, being a widely used package manager for Node.js, has a larger and more active community contributing to packages and improvements.
Integration: Packer can be integrated into Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines to automate image creation and distribution, while npm is often integrated into Node.js projects to manage dependencies and run scripts during development and deployment processes.

In Summary, Packer is focused on image creation for various platforms, while npm is specifically designed for managing Node.js packages and dependencies within projects.

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Advice on Packer, npm

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

Packer	npm
Packer automates the creation of any type of machine image. It embraces modern configuration management by encouraging you to use automated scripts to install and configure the software within your Packer-made images.	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.
Super fast infrastructure deployment. Packer images allow you to launch completely provisioned and configured machines in seconds, rather than several minutes or hours.;Multi-provider portability. Because Packer creates identical images for multiple platforms, you can run production in AWS, staging/QA in a private cloud like OpenStack, and development in desktop virtualization solutions such as VMware or VirtualBox.;Improved stability. Packer installs and configures all the software for a machine at the time the image is built. If there are bugs in these scripts, they'll be caught early, rather than several minutes after a machine is launched.;Greater testability. After a machine image is built, that machine image can be quickly launched and smoke tested to verify that things appear to be working. If they are, you can be confident that any other machines launched from that image will function properly.	-
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 17.6K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 3.0K
Stacks 573	Stacks 137.4K
Followers 566	Followers 82.2K
Votes 41	Votes 1.6K
Pros & Cons
Pros 27 Cross platform builds 8 Vm creation automation 4 Bake in security 1 Good documentation 1 Easy to use	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
Integrations
Amazon EC2 DigitalOcean Docker Google Compute Engine OpenStack VirtualBox	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Packer, npm?

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.

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.

AWS CloudFormation

You can use AWS CloudFormation’s sample templates or create your own templates to describe the AWS resources, and any associated dependencies or runtime parameters, required to run your application. You don’t need to figure out the order in which AWS services need to be provisioned or the subtleties of how to make those dependencies work.

Scalr

Scalr is a remote state & operations backend for Terraform with access controls, policy as code, and many quality of life features.

Pulumi

Pulumi is a cloud development platform that makes creating cloud programs easy and productive. Skip the YAML and just write code. Pulumi is multi-language, multi-cloud and fully extensible in both its engine and ecosystem of packages.

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.

Azure Resource Manager

It is the deployment and management service for Azure. It provides a management layer that enables you to create, update, and delete resources in your Azure subscription. You use management features, like access control, locks, and tags, to secure and organize your resources after deployment.

Habitat

Habitat is a new approach to automation that focuses on the application instead of the infrastructure it runs on. With Habitat, the apps you build, deploy, and manage behave consistently in any runtime — metal, VMs, containers, and PaaS. You'll spend less time on the environment and more time building features.

Google Cloud Deployment Manager

Google Cloud Deployment Manager allows you to specify all the resources needed for your application in a declarative format using yaml.

Related Comparisons

Packer vs npm: What are the differences?

Installation Process: Packer is a tool for creating identical machine images for multiple platforms, while npm is a package manager for Node.js. Packer needs to be downloaded and installed separately, whereas npm comes bundled with Node.js.
Purpose: Packer is primarily used for building and deploying machine images, while npm is specifically designed for managing Node.js packages and dependencies. Packer focuses on infrastructure automation, while npm focuses on package management within the Node.js ecosystem.
Support: Packer supports multiple cloud providers and virtualization platforms, allowing users to create images for various environments. On the other hand, npm is dedicated to managing Node.js dependencies and does not have functionality related to creating machine images for different platforms.
Configuration: Packer uses JSON configuration files to define the creation of machine images, specifying builders, provisioners, and post-processors. In contrast, npm utilizes a package.json file to list dependencies, scripts, and metadata related to a Node.js project.
Community: Packer has a smaller community compared to npm, as it caters to a niche audience interested in infrastructure automation. npm, being a widely used package manager for Node.js, has a larger and more active community contributing to packages and improvements.
Integration: Packer can be integrated into Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines to automate image creation and distribution, while npm is often integrated into Node.js projects to manage dependencies and run scripts during development and deployment processes.

In Summary, Packer is focused on image creation for various platforms, while npm is specifically designed for managing Node.js packages and dependencies within projects.

Packer vs npm

Overview