Introduction

Node Package Manager(npm) is the online software repository helps in publishing and managing open-source node.js based projects. It also provides a CLI (Command Line Interface) for package install/uninstall, version management and dependency management.

All npm packages contains a special file called, package.json. This file consists of several metadata required for a package. This is the file where a package owner describes the name of the package, version, dependencies, license information, code repository etc. This file provides information to npm so that, npm repository can uniquely identify the package and manage the dependencies.

In this article, I am going to explain the different ways of managing dependencies and how are they different from each other.

But wait, What is a Dependency?

Dependency is something that is dependent on something else. In this case, depending on another package available as npm(publicly, privately or locally).

In the world of re-usability and open-source mindset, it is very rare that an app will be built without any dependencies included.

#npm #javascript #node.js #general programming