Planet CakePHP

Thanks to Isaac, npm is getting more and more awesome by the hour. One of the
coolest recent additions (you need at least v1.0.26) is the ability to specify
private git repositories urls as a dependency in your package.json files.

At transloadit, we are currently using the feature to move some of our
infrastructure code into separate packages, allowing for those to be tested
and developed in isolation making our core application easier to maintain and
work on.

The syntax for referencing a git repository (and commit) is as follows:

{
  "name": "my-app",
  "dependencies": {
    "private-repo": "git+ssh://git@github.com:my-account/node-private-repo.git#v0.0.1",
  }
}

This will include a private npm module called "private-repo" from GitHub. The
url also contains an optional refspec (#v0.0.1) that tells npm which branch,
commit, or in this case tag you want to have checked out.

Now of course this is not the only way to do private npm repositories, but it
is much simpler than running your own registry, so I would recommend it to
most people.

Before you head of to play with this, here is a final tip that may safe you
some headaches. In all your private npm modules, add "private": true to your
package.json. This will make sure npm will never let you accidentally publish
your secret sauce to the official npm registry.

Happy hacking,
--fg

PS: When deploying, don't forget that you need to authorize the servers ssh key for the GitHub repository you are depending on.