npm-on-IPFS


TLDR: npm-on-ipfs enables you to install your favourite modules from the distributed web using IPFS, as well as to have a cache always ready and shared on your local network — great for enterprise and community coding settings, or even just enabling more speedy work when you and your friends are working at a low-bandwidth coffee shop.

Quick background

As the largest software registry in the world, npm is also the de facto package manager for the JavaScript ecosystem, with more than 900k packages and more than 7 billion downloads a week. It's incredibly fast and reliable — however, we couldn't stop ourselves from wondering what would happen if we put the world's largest registry on the distributed web.

The result is npm-on-ipfs: a module that wraps your package manager of choice (npm or yarn) in configuration to use IPFS, not HTTP, to retrieve your dependencies from the central npm registry. It's still a work in progress, but we think you'll find it useful and awesome for the following reasons:

- Having dependencies on the distributed web makes development more available because multiple nodes supplying tarballs means no panic if a single source goes dark
- It can also be faster and cheaper — if dependencies are already being hosted on your local network, this means lower bandwidth cost and higher speed
- If enough dependencies are hosted on your local network (think enterprise or community development settings), that network can operate offline-first: Take your team on a remote mountain retreat and hack away!

Install & use

``console
$ npm i ipfs-npm -g
`

$3

ipfs-npm wraps your favorite package manager (npm or yarn) with configuration that uses IPFS, rather than HTTP, to retrieve your dependencies from the central npm registry. Since it's intended to replace npm/yarn, all the commands you're used to will work in the same way.

For example: In the directory with your package.json file, run ...

`console
$ ipfs-npm install
👿 Spawning an in-process IPFS node
Swarm listening on /ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/57029/ipfs/QmVDtTRCoYyYu5JFdtrtBMS4ekPn8f9NndymoHdWuuJ7N2
🗂️ Loading registry index from https://registry.js.ipfs.io
☎️ Dialling registry mirror /ip4/35.178.192.119/tcp/10015/ipfs/QmWBaYSnmgZi6F6D69JuZGhyL8rm6pt8GX5r7Atc6Gd7vR,/dns4/registry.js.ipfs.io/tcp/10015/ipfs/QmWBaYSnmgZi6F6D69JuZGhyL8rm6pt8GX5r7Atc6Gd7vR
🗑️ Replacing old registry index if it exists
📠 Copying registry index /ipfs/QmQmVsNFw3stJky7agrETeB9kZqkcvLSLRnFFMrhiR8zG1 to /npm-registry
👩‍🚀 Starting local proxy
🚀 Server running on port 57314
🎁 Installing dependencies with /Users/alex/.nvm/versions/node/v10.8.0/bin/npm
...
`

You can use any command you'd use with npm/yarn with ipfs-npm in exactly the same way:

`console
$ ipfs-npm install
$ ipfs-npm version minor
$ ipfs-npm publish
$ ipfs-npm --package-manager=yarn
// etc
`

CLI guide

`console
$ ipfs-npm --help
ipfs-npm

Installs your js dependencies using IPFS

Options:
--help Show help [boolean]
--version Show version number [boolean]
--package-manager Which package manager to use - eg. npm or yarn
[default: "npm"]
--ipfs-registry Where to download any packages that haven't made
it into the registry index yet from
[default: "https://registry.js.ipfs.io"]
--registry-upload-size-limit How large a file upload to allow when proxying
for the registry [default: "1024MB"]
--registry-update-interval Only request the manifest for a given module
every so many ms [default: 60000]
--registry-connect-timeout How long to wait while dialling the mirror
before timing out [default: 5000]
--registry-read-timeout How long to wait for individual packages before
timing out [default: 5000]
--ipfs-mfs-prefix Which mfs prefix to use
[default: "/npm-registry"]
--ipfs-node "proc" to start an in-process IPFS node,
"disposable" to start an in-process disposable
node, "go" or "js" to spawn an IPFS node as a
separate process or a multiaddr that resolves to
a running node [default: "proc"]
--ipfs-repo If --ipfs-node is set to "proc", this is the
path that contains the IPFS repo to use
[default: "/Users/alex/.jsipfs"]
--ipfs-flush Whether to flush the MFS cache [default: true]
--clone-pin Whether to pin cloned modules [default: false]
--request-max-sockets How many concurrent http requests to make while
cloning the repo [default: 10]
--request-retries How many times to retry when downloading
manifests and tarballs from the registry
[default: 5]
--request-retry-delay How long in ms to wait between retries
[default: 1000]
--request-timeout How long in ms we should wait when requesting
files [default: 30000]
--npm-registry A fallback to use if the IPFS npm registry is
unavailable
[default: "https://registry.npmjs.com"]
`

Configuration files

ipfs-npm uses rc to parse configuration files. Please see the rc repository for the order of precedence used when searching for configuration files. The app is ipfs-npm.

For instance, if you want to always use a remote daemon, you could create a ~/.ipfs-npmrc file like this:

`json
{
"ipfsNode": "/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/5001"
}
``

To learn more

Protocol Labs, the organization behind IPFS, is actively working on improving the landscape for package managers and the distributed web in 2019 and beyond. To that end, we've created an IPFS Package Managers Special Interest Group, and your feedback and contributions are very welcome!

If you're actively (or just casually) using npm-on-ipfs and have feedback about your user experience, we'd love to hear from you, too. Please open an issue in the Special Interest Group and we'll get right back to you.

More resources you may find useful:
- The original npm-on-ipfs demo video
- A more detailed introduction to npm-on-ipfs from David Dias' blog
- Node.js Interactive talk on Stellar Module Management, aka npm-on-ipfs

Lead maintainer

Alex Potsides