Show HN: I built VS Code extension for Node.js package management | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: I built VS Code extension for Node.js package management

npm.kasper.io

6 pointsIdered4 comments

Excellent site. To the point with a little pizazz. Love it. I'll give the extension a try but I have to ask, what pain point does it solve for you? I've tried package manager extensions and found they were not worth the trouble. A couple of yarn or npm commands, or editing the package.json was sufficient.

Thanks! Here's how it compares to CLI npm command:

You can assign shortcut which will focus "Add dependency" input. Once it's focused you can start searching packages and get instant suggestions with data such as description, downloads in last 30 days, package size or info if package is deprecated. It will also auto-instal related @types/* package if available and not deprecated. Whole process can be done much faster than switching to terminal and typing "npm i react && npm i -D @types/react".

At this point extension is already winning(in terms of time to search and install package) over cli command but there are more good stuff: - it will highlight outdated dependencies + you can click "double arrow" button to update to latest version - it will highlight packages with security issues(works for yarn and pnpm). You can check package details to see list of issues and recommended solution. This is powered by GitHub Advisory Database - while searching you can add @ to see a list of versions or add @@ to see a list of tagged versions(e.g latest, beta) - you can remove pacakge/move package to normal deps/dev deps by clicking button - you can click on size info in footer to see a list of installed packages with package size info and download speed

For now it fails at 2 things: - it spawns multiple processes if you install/remove one package after another. Package managers can handle this but it's totally a perf problem on lower spec machines. - you can't install multiple packages via single search e.g you can't type in "react react-dom" and press enter. I plan to add this feature

My biggest pain solved by extension? It's probably that I don't have to switch to browser to search for package I need e.g if I need package to change color from hex to rgb, I can just type in "color" and I'll get decent amount of info to pick a package - preview: https://cloud.kasper.io/vDVclZ

That's all I guess, let me know if you find it useful or have a feature request, thanks!

I like how it enables package search right in IDE. I'd be interested to integrate Packj [1]. Sent you an email.

1. https://github.com/ossillate-inc/packj

Looks good!

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