Exorbitant Alternatives

exorbitant reviews and mentions

• Show HN: WAPM – WebAssembly Package Manager
  6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 2 Mar 2022

  "Run it in the browser" is pretty cool! I've played some with Rust / WASM in the past, but at the moment don't have bandwidth at the moment to try WAPM/Wasmer.

  Assuming the goal is able to use software written in any language as easy as it is if you were a java or dotnet developer, how do you plan on getting this as big as npm or PyPI? A lot of the examples I've clicked on seem to be forks of the projects instead of pulling in the original source as a git submodule.

  My Bazel-based bias would be to assume WASM is mostly an execution platform target, just like linux/x86_64 or macOS/m1, and I should be able to pull in and compile the source myself at any version I choose. It is hard enough as it is to pull in official third-party library sources into Bazel due to the varied ways libraries are built, so I don't see how the current official maintainers of projects will also volunteer to also maintain their build process and profile for WAPM too.

  Some feedback about potential issues:

  When I search packages for "Library" for "All Time" nothing shows up in the list. But things like sqlite and ken-matsui/jyt are labeled as "Library" on the detail page, while their docs make them look like "Standalone".

  Package details probably should be sanitized. For example in rajsite/exorbitant the GITHUB attribute uses a git+https URL which isn't helpful for a web browsing session. And the HOMEPAGE says https://github.com/rajsite/exorbitant, but the actual link goes to "cowsay.overnice.com". I haven't created an account to see how a package is created, but a GitHub project link should only accept user/repo to generate the URL automatically.

  The collaborators list of ken-matsui/jyt is empty, yet the package says it was last updated 2 days ago. The tooltip on the avatar icon says "ken-matsui", but it isn't an alternative way to click to the profile/namespace page. Also last updated-by should display the user/namespace name of who updated it, even though it is implied.

  Recommend cleaning out or suppressing in search package that haven't been updated or attested to be up-to-date within a few months. For example "sqlite/sqlite" is showing up for me in "Popular Standalone Apps" on the homepage, but it hasn't been updated in 2 years. I see that you own the package, but also understand that you need to get the repository seeded with useful packages, and that a startup can take many years before hitting the next point in the change of the growth curve.