[Web dev for beginners] Package managers

This blog post is part of the series “Web development for beginners” – which teaches people who have never programmed how to create web apps with JavaScript.

To download the projects, go to the GitHub repository learning-web-dev-code and follow the instructions there.

I’m interested in feedback! If there is something you don’t understand, please write a comment at the end of this page.

In this chapter, we install a package manager. That gives us access to all kinds of software.

What is a package manager?  #

A software package contains functionality for an operating system – e.g., a new shell command. As the name implies, a package manager helps us manage packages: We can install new packages, list which packages are installed, uninstall packages, etc. These are a few popular package managers:

• Windows: WinGet
• MacOS: Homebrew
• Linux has a variety of package managers. You need to find out which one works best with your distribution.

An important shell command: curl  #

When working with HTTP(S), there is one very useful shell command: curl. It may already be installed on your operating system. You can check like this:

curl -h

If you don’t get an error message then curl is already installed.

Installing curl via a package manager  #

This is how you can install curl:

• WinGet: cURL.cURL
• Homebrew: curl
• Other ways of installing curl

Using curl  #

Let’s quickly try out curl. The simplest way is to use it as follows: It downloads a resource from the web and prints it to the terminal:

curl https://example.com

curl has many more features. Check curl.se for more information.