Deno Package Manager [W.I.P.]

DPM or Deno Package Manager is an NPM like package manager for Deno. While Deno's original philosophy is to cache all of it's dependencies by downloading them via URLs, some people prefer the NodeJS way of importing modules. This project is for these savages (wink wink).

DPM downloads the desired package, when using dpm install <modulename> from deno.land/x and stores it within the deno_modules directory, while managing all your dependencies inside the deps.json file, in your project root. DPM also generates an import map in deno_modules/import_map.json, so you can use the easy-import style.

import { Houston } from 'houston/mod.ts'

DPM only supports TypeScript for now. I will be adding JS support once I have completed all other TODOs and have time

Installing

Please do not install DPM yet. It's still in development. Contributions are welcome.

To install DPM, you'll need to give it allow-net, allow-run, allow-read and allow-write permissions

deno install --allow-net --allow-read --allow-write --allow-run https://deno.land/x/dpm/mod.ts

Usage

Create a project

dpm init

This will create a new Deno project with deps.json and deno_modules/ dir.

Installing modules

Before installing, make sure the module has a mod.ts file where it exports all of it's required types, functions, etc. Modules without a mod.ts are not supported.

dpm i <module_name>

Loading dependencies from a `deps.json` file

dpm install

Importing modules inside your Deno project

Importing modules differs a little from the standard Deno importing or from Node-typescript style imports. Deno's import maps feature provides a shortcut to local modules.

So if you want to import for e.g. the oak Deno middleware, after installing it with dpm i oak, you can do it the following way:

import { Router } from 'oak/mod.ts'

But you can also import other files from module:

import { CookiesOptions } from 'oak/cookies.ts'

Remember, this only works, if you are using one of the dpm run scripts, from deps.json (there are other options available). Read more about this here

Import maps

DPM is based on Deno's import map feature. This allows the user to provide shortcuts to local (and online) modules. Let's say that you have a module in your home folder: /home/deno_mod. You can provide a shortcut to it, using an import map, like this:

import_map.json

{
  "imports": {
    "mod_name/": "file:///home/deno_mod/"
  }
}

Now you will be able to use an import with a shortcut:

mod.ts

import { AnInstanceFromYourMod } from 'mod_name/mod.ts'

Remember to add the extra flags to get the import map working:

deno run --importmap=import_map.json --unstable mod.ts

Why is this important for DPM users?

We use import maps, to provide an easy-import style for the users. If you want to create your own script in deps.json or you want to run your project with deno run, you need to add the import map to it.

Running with `deno run`

deno run --importmap=deno_modules/import_map.json --unstable mod.ts

More about import maps in the Deno documentation

TODO List

V2

Right now, dpm DPM is a simple package manager relying on the deno website repo's database.json file, to fetch modules. DPM v2 will be a standalone package manager, with it's own registry, based on github. This is a future plan, and I am not working on this at the moment.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome, since this is a huge project with a lot to do. Please make a pull request, if you have something to share!

SteelAlloy/dpm