[phinnaeus]

It looks like the diff-so-fancy script is bash, and the diff-highlight script is perl. Why is it set up in npm? WTF?

[lucideer]

There's no easy install methods for small simple scripts that doesn't involve multiple manual steps, have an automated upgrade path, is cross platform and is consistent+familiar to a large subset of developers.

Of the options out there for the above, npm - while hassle if you don't have it already installed - is probably the closest balance of maintainer and end-developer convenience.

[phinnaeus]

Thanks for the explanation! I went ahead and installed npm to use this, I think it's a pretty nifty little utility and worth it.

[hobarrera]

make install?

[lucideer]

Nothing wrong with make, but to be fair, it doesn't really meet any of the criteria I mentioned

- no built-in remote repos / app directory so it's just the final step of multiple install steps

- no built-in automated upgrade path

- unless you're fiddling with Cygwin or MSys2, it's not really as cross-platform

- likely to be less convenient for the maintainer than the package.json standard

[Grue3]

So that it's web-scale, obviously.

[hueving]

And you use maven to build it.