npm – the Node package manager

Node by itself is a pretty basic system, being a JavaScript interpreter with a few interesting asynchronous I/O libraries. One of the things which makes Node interesting is the rapidly growing ecosystem of third party modules for Node. At the center of that ecosystem is npm. The modules can be downloaded at source and assembled manually for use with Node programs. The npm command gives us a simpler way; npm is the de-facto standard package manager for Node and it greatly simplifies downloading and using these modules. We will talk about npm at length in the next chapter.

The sharp-eyed will have noticed that npm is already installed via all the installation methods already discussed. In the past, npm was installed separately, but today it is bundled with Node.

Now that we have npm installed, let's take it for a quick spin. Hexy is a utility program for printing hex dumps of files. It serves our purpose right now in giving us something to quickly install and try...