[_greim_]

I think it's "reproducible" in the sense that it starts from scratch every time, rather than sometimes starting from scratch, and other times starting with a pre-populated node_modules. If you want actual versioning reproducibility, you'll need to put an npm-shrinkwrap.json in your root.

[alanh]

I see. They shouldn’t use the word “reproducible” then, because something is either reproducible or it’s not.

If they just mean, “We ignore everything but your package.json to generate a deploy,” say that, don’t mis-use the word “reproducible.”

(Heroku, for example, has put a lot of effort into making deploying to their platform actually, truly, really-the-same-years-into-the-future reproducible. `npm install`, especially without shrinkwrap -- and `now` doesn't seem to be using shrinkwrap -- will never get there.)

I’m still not 100% if I get what they are doing or not.

After all, I need some sort of index.js or dist/foo.js in my package, and if they aren’t using git or anything, then isn’t this by definition happening based on transient local state (my local files at `now`-time)?

[_greim_]

> `now` doesn't seem to be using shrinkwrap

They aren't? I haven't tried a deployment, but was hoping/assuming they'd upload a shrinkwrap along with everything else and that it would drive the install as per usual.

> I’m still not 100% if I get what they are doing or not.

I think their angle is to lower barriers to entry close to zero for cloud deployments, and thus drain a shallow ocean. "Shallow" in the sense that there are devs who are interested, but maybe not interested enough to buy into terminology like "dynos" or "cartridges" or "lambdas". "Ocean" in the sense that there are (supposedly) quite a few of these people.

[alanh]

I’m potentially one of those people, at least for personal projects and such. But I also need to understand what the hell I’m getting into before I make the leap.

I haven’t kept my personal site up with no linkrot for the past 10 years by making technology choices on a whim, you know?