Fairly common pattern in NodeJS (to store binary blob in npmjs, not GitHub, but similar pattern anyhow) so you don't trigger builds on download.

Not saying it's the greatest idea, I despise it personally, but I do understand the motivation for it.

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StellaMary an hour ago | parent [-]

Most of companies don't even know that node js npm packages has build scripts which do rely on python c++ build tools. That's y. This saves lots of time. Also binaries once checked and published cannot be edited in npm / all we can do is just remove that version fully if below 300 downloads.

	▲	embedding-shape an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Any developers worth their salt has build scripts turned off everywhere at this point, and manually build the packages they need it for, or manually whitelisted. It may save time, but as others mentioned, shipping binary blobs in a opaque way is a great way of making people avoid your project.