npm’s job is to keep you out of dependency hell, not put you in it.

The beta of npm 3 has been released, and I’m running it right now:

$ npm --version
3.0.0  

If you want to try it, use npm install -g [email protected] but be careful: not only is it a beta, but you can also break your npm installation if the global install fails. How do I know? My permissions were messed up on /usr/local/bin/npm, so when I tried to upgrade I saw “Error: EACCES, unlink … node_modules/npm/.eslintrc”. From that point npm was no longer in my $PATH… I actually reinstalled my current version of Node to fix it quickly, but I can imagine people getting very confused and frustrated about seeing command not found: npm.

If you’re wondering what npm 3 will do for you, then a big thing is actually the UI: installation has a different appearance (it’s more like npm ls), and npm outdated has changed. The “location” column shows which module required a dependency rather than where it is on disk.

Big projects should feel a little saner thanks to less nesting:

Your dependencies will now be installed maximally flat. Insofar as is possible, all of your dependencies, and their dependencies, and THEIR dependencies will be installed in your project’s node_modules folder with no nesting.

If you make use of peerDependencies for modules that you distribute, you should be aware that they don’t install dependencies anymore. Instead the user is warned about an unmet dependency.

This shifts the responsibility for fulfilling peer dependencies from library framework / plugin maintainers to application authors, and is intended to get users out of the dependency hell caused by conflicting peerDependency constraints. npm’s job is to keep you out of dependency hell, not put you in it.

npm 3 is considered a rewrite by the authors. The level of redevelopment means we’ll hopefully see some rich new features in the near future for front-end developers. If you’re like me and you use Node for lightweight server-side apps, with rich client-side logic, then this will appeal to you.

The changelog for version 3 is actually very good and you really should read the full thing if you manage Node projects or distribute modules with npm.

Source: DailyJS