Monday, September 23, 2013

People still use tarballs!

When specifying dependencies or devDependencies in a package.json file, instead of specifying the version number of a package for Node.js to go procure by itself, you may just specify a tarball hosted somewhere out on the web! I suppose this is one way to install your own home-rolled stuff as dependencies. Here is how the markup could look. (This example also includes using GIT for managing dependencies/devDependencies.)

"dependencies": {
   "foo" : "http://www.example.com/foo.tar.gz",
   "node-fogbugz": "git://github.com/icodeforlove/node-fogbugz.git",
   
etc...

If you are wondering what a .tar.gz file is in lieu of just a .tar tarball, well, so was I. Partway down this the following is given verbatim:

  1. tar puts multiple files into a single (tar) file.
  2. gzip compresses one file (only).
  3. So to get a compressed archive, you combine the two

 
 

.gz is "gzip" ...get it?

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