Link dependencies in a package or bower file to their GitHub page

[stefanbuck]

I've created an chrome extension for that, but this should be made available to all GitHub user by default. The idea behind is simple. All dependencies listed in a package.json or bower.json file should be a link to the related GiHub repo page. That's it!

[Mithgol]

How does GitHub know that ffi npm package corresponds to the http://github.com/rbranson/node-ffi repository, for example?

[stefanbuck]

With a simple crawler like i do here.

1. Get a list of all available packages from the npm registry.
2. Call the npm registry again with the package name to get detailed informations about the package like https://registry.npmjs.org/ffi.
3. If the package.json is well written, the response contains a field for the repository url. Otherwise
   we need more effort to find the repository url with a github search which compares some meta datas like name description version see

[patcon]

I love this idea @stefanbuck! Any objection to the premise of using the registry on-the-fly and caching with local storage?

https://registry.npmjs.org/ffi/latest

Also, see #128

[stefanbuck]

Yes i have one. Request time. The request time for a single dependency look up can take more than 2sec, dependence on the quality of the package.json file and how much effort we need to find the right repo. The best solutions for me is to crawl the registries and update the extension once per week ;)

[stefanbuck]

Reply from GitHub:

Hi Stefan,

Thanks for the suggestion! I watched the video you included in the issue, and the
Chrome extension looks great. I'll certainly pass it along to the team. I can't
promise if/when we might implement that, however your feedback has definitely
been recorded.

Let us know if you have any other questions!

Cheers,
Jamie

[stefanbuck]

Hi guys, there is an update available. require() statements in a .js file will also be linked with the related package.

[oprogramador]

@stefanbuck

some of NPM packages don't have a GitHub repo, so in this case, it should redirect to the NPM package page

[stefanbuck]

That's the case now.

Amazing to see such an old topic popping up 😄