What is David?

• Freaky
• Hipster
• Geek

A service that helps you keep your project dependencies up to date.

A Node module, CLI tool and website.

Node Module

You can get:

1. A list of all dependencies in your project
2. A list of updated dependencies in your project
3. A list of updated STABLE dependencies in your project

For each dependency, david tells you:

1. The latest version
2. The latest STABLE version
3. The semver version or range your project currently requires

Some code

var david = require("david");
var manifest = {/* Your package.json */};

david.getUpdatedDependencies(manifest, {dev: false, stable: true}, function(err, deps) {
	console.log('dependencies with newer STABLE versions for', manifest.name);
	console.log(deps);
});

// Example output:
// dependencies with newer STABLE versions for aaa
// {
//   foo: {required: "~0.3.4", stable: "0.4.0", latest: "0.5.0-pre"},
//   bar: {required: "~1.0.0", stable: "1.2.0", latest: "1.2.0"}
// }
		

CLI

Install david globally npm install david -g

Website

Uses expressjs, built using grunt, nodeunit for tests. Help from d3 for data visualisations.

• https://david-dm.org
• Scrape your GitHub package.json. Show you some prettys.
• Embeddable status badges!!!!!1

semver

semver is the version standard.

NPM uses semver. NPM allows you to specify version ranges. This is fantastic!

~1.0.2

This is shorthand for >= 1.0.2 < 1.1.0

http://semver.org
https://npmjs.org/doc/json.html#Tilde-Version-Ranges

Out of date?

• Newer STABLE versions
• Newer non-stable is NOT out of date
  e.g. required: ~0.5.0, stable: 0.5.8, latest: 0.6.0-pre
• Pinned dependencies might not be out of date.

...what?

Absolute versions, repositories or tags.

Some hurdles

• What to do about the reckless version ranges
  * latest >= 0.0.0
• Some people depend exclusively on absolute versions
• Some people don't want to use the badge

What next?

Where can we take this tool?

• Most popular modules

What next?

Where can we take this tool?

• Most popular modules
• Indicator of project health
  • Who uses this module?
  • Find well maintained modules
  • Visibility on complexity
• A more useful tool
  • Per project RSS feed
  • Notifications
  • Private repositories support
  • Personal projects status overview page
  • AUTO: Clone latest version, update dependencies, run tests - will it blend?

EOF

David

https://david-dm.org
http://davidiswatching.tumblr.com
https://github.com/alanshaw/david
https://github.com/alanshaw/david-www
https://github.com/alanshaw/david-presentation

Alan

https://twitter.com/_alanshaw
https://github.com/alanshaw

Slides

https://github.com/LeaVerou/CSSS