npm

npm is the ubiquitous package manager for Node.

Using a private registry

Access tokens and credentials are stored in the .npmrc file. The .npmrc file could be per package, per user under ~/.npmrc or globally, under /etc/.npmrc.

These follow this format:

@NAMESPACE:<key>=<value>

For example, your .npmrc could contain something which looks like:

# This has no namespace, and just sets the registry for everything.
registry=https://npm.pkg.github.com

# You can expand environment variables.
npm.pkg.github.com/:_authToken=${GITHUB_OAUTH_TOKEN}

It's best practice to not include raw tokens in a project file, and to either move them into a user-scoped .npmrc, or to put them into environment variables.

npm init or npm create

Commands to temporarily install, and then execute a given package.

As in,

npm create svelte@latest

Is the same as

npm init svelte@latest

Is shorthand for

npm install -g create-svelte@latest ; npx create-svelte

Important to note that npm init will prepend the package it executes with create-.

For more info on this, see the npm docs.