Node Package Manager (npm)
When someone talks about Node Package Manager or npm for short, they can be referring to one or more of the following three things:
- A command-line application that manages packages for a Node.js application
- The repository where developers and companies publish their packages for others to use
- The website where people manage their profile and search for packages
Most programming languages offer at least one way for developers to share packages with each other: Java has Maven, C# has NuGet, Python has PIP, and so on. Node.js started to ship with its own package manager just a few months after its initial release.
Packages can include any type of code that developers think would be useful to others. And sometimes, they also include tools to aid developers in terms of local development.
As the packaged code needs to be shared, there needs to be a repository where all the packages are stored. And to publish their packages, authors...