ckage

C影 - Language-agnostic package and project manager

Usage

First, install it with $ npm i ckage -g to install it globally.

  Usage: ckage [options]

  Options:

    -V, --version          output the version number
    -s, --save             Save into the ckage file along with install
    -d, --dir <directory>  Specify a custom package out directory
    p, publish             Publish to the repository
    i, install [pkg]       Install a package; specify no package to install from ckage.json
    -h, --help             output usage information

ckage, like npm, allows you to have a manifest file (ckage.json) which makes it easier to specify dependencies in a project. When installing a package, specify the --save flag to add the package into your manifest file.

Manifest files appear as follows:

{
    "packageTitle": "your-title-no-spaces",
    "sourceDirs": [
        "src",
        "anything-can-go-here"
    ],
    "packages":[
        "pkg1",
        "pkg2",
        "whatever-package-you-need"
    ],
    "fileIgnores": [
        "node_modules",
        "any-other-file-to-ignore"
    ],
    "creator": "Name <[email protected]>"
}

By default, ckage uses the ckage/ folder for packages.

The global config file for ckage exists at ~/.ckage.json.

{
        "token": "YOUR_LOGIN_TOKEN_FOR_CKAGE",
        "url": "http://base_url_here.tld"
}

url is the base URL for the instance of ckage you are using. This is just the URL you have it running on. This can be a local server or one setup over anything that supports HTTP. The URL in a testing environment can just be set to "http://localhost:8080".

Setting up a Ckage server

One of the core features of Ckage is a simple server setup. To setup the server, simply clone the repository, run the the setup script in server/ and start the server with $ node server.js.

To run it on an HTTP port, set the environment variable CKAGEPORT to whatever port you want to run it on. The setup script sets this port to 8080. You can set it to any arbitrary port with export CKAGEPORT=x where x is your port. NOTE: In order to run on any port below 1024 (ex: 80, 443), you must run as super user.

All packages published to your ckage instance will be in the pkg/ directory in the directory of server.js.

Why?

It may not be clear why we would build yet another package manager. There are so many and yet we built another one, why?

The purpose of Ckage is to provide an incredibly lightweight solution to internal package management. At a company, you don't want to have to deal with dependency conflicts.

Furthermore, let's say I want to create an internal node module to use across multiple projects but I don't want to make this code published. What can I do? well with Ckage that's simple. You simply point the package manager at your own custom instance. Ckage is distributed, you can host an instance if you so please.

Let's again assume that an NPM package becomes compromised. You shouldn't be concerned about updating the packages you have because each package should be individually checked for security or dependency conflicts before being checked in.

The purpose of Ckage is to get red of all of those uncontrollable variables you have when you use a public package manager.