What is new in spm.js

Question

Just learned that there exists another package manager: Static Package Manager or spm.js - http://spmjs.io/. From brief reviewing of the documentation the tool seems very similar to "old good" Bower.

Is it so? What is different about spm.js that Bower or npm don't provide?

Answer 1

spm.js, bower, volo, component, jspm, npm + browserify etc. all serve front-end developers and the end result you get is very similar. Here are some differences to consider:

• spm.js manages binaries via the publish command similar to npm, where as bower fetches from git endpoints (however there's discussion to change this)
• spm.js packages are CommonJS packages and it's recommended to use it with the module loader sea.js, bower is indifferent about module loaders, npm isn't optimized for front-end dev yet, however browserify helps
• Both spm.js and sea.js are popular within the Chinese developer community as they're driven by the great folks at Alipay. Though there's English docs, most discussion on github happen in Chinese (e.g. discussion on positioning & the future)