[sonnym]

I want to like meteor.

It sounds like the installation script, aside from handling the MongoDB and node setup, could be treated like a typical node package. Based on the fact that meteor has no package.json, seemingly none of those core packages are installed via npm either.

I may be alone in this, but I guess I would just prefer if my web framework expected me to have the interpreter and database installed, and used the package manager already provided for this environment.

[parasj]

Meteor does feel a little heavy (especially when you get around to deploying it) but take a look at demeteorizer, at https://github.com/onmodulus/demeteorizer

It converts Meteor apps into more traditional node.js with a package.json

[emgee3]

Demeteorizer is a offensively named script that automatically builds a package.json for you. It doesn't make Meteor apps lighter weight or anything like that. It simply makes it easier for you to install the requisite npm dependencies.

[emgee3]

While it would be trivially easy to port the Meteor installer to npm, since Meteor doesn't require node or npm to be installed, it would be a step backward to do so.

Meteor is built against specific node and npm versions and the install script installs the necessary node binaries.

Considering what Meteor brings a developer, getting hung up on the install method is missing the big picture.