> For example, I don't think there are Node.js libraries packaged for Debian that allow you to install them from apt and use it in projects

Web search shows some: https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=node&searchon=na... (but also shows "for optimizing reasons some results might have been suppressed" so might not be all)

Although probably different from other distros, Arch for example seems to have none.

▲ o11c 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Locally, you can do:

  apt-cache showpkg 'node-*' | grep ^Package:

which returns 4155 results, though 727 of them are type packages.

Using these in commonjs code is trivial; they are automatically found by `require`. Unfortunately, system-installed packages are yet another casualty of the ESM transition ... there are ways to make it work but it's not automatic like it used to be.

▲

9dev 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> Unfortunately, system-installed packages are yet another casualty of the ESM transition ...

A small price to pay for the abundant benefits ESM brings.

	▲	o11c 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Honestly, I don't see the value gain, given how many other problems the JS tooling has (even ignoring the ecosystem). In particular, the fact that Typescript makes it very difficult to write a project that uses both browser-specific and node-specific functionality is particularly damning.