Installing a package should not be something you wait through.
Flux does the one job a package manager has, and skips almost everything the older clients accumulated on the way here.
Every tarball you have ever pulled is kept once, per user, in a shared cache, so a second project asking for the same package copies it out of your disk rather than off the network. There is no plugin pipeline to boot, no lifecycle machinery to walk, and no store to reconcile before the first byte moves.
The result is a client that starts instantly and finishes quickly, on a cold cache and on a warm one alike.
the whole install
flux install expressflux installSame shape as the commands you already type. If you know npm, there is nothing here to learn, and the documentation is a reference, not a course.
Open source, and open in the way that matters.
MIT licensed, built in public, no telemetry and no account. What you install is what you can read.
A package manager sits between you and every line of code you ship, which is a strange place for a black box. Flux is a few thousand lines of TypeScript you can read in an afternoon, released under MIT, with every binary built from the same public repository. Nothing phones home, nothing asks you to sign in, and nothing is held back for a paid tier.
Two ways in, both one line.
Take the npm package if Node is already on the machine. Take the standalone binary if you would rather not carry a runtime around.
a · global npm package
npm install -g @iamgautamsuthar/fluxRequires Node 18 or later.
b · standalone binary
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/callmegautam/flux/main/install.sh | shirm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/callmegautam/flux/main/install.ps1 | iexSelf contained, no Node needed. Linux and macOS take the curl script, Windows PowerShell takes irm.
Prebuilt targets, checksums, the cache location and every command are in the documentation.
Questions people ask before they install it.
Short answers, with the longer version in the documentation.
What is flux?
- Flux is an open source command line package manager for JavaScript and Node.js projects. It installs, updates, lists and removes packages from the npm registry, runs the scripts in your package.json, and ships either as an npm package or as a single self contained binary.
Is flux faster than npm and pnpm?
- Yes. Flux keeps every downloaded tarball in one shared per user cache, so a second project asking for the same package copies it from disk instead of the network. It also starts with no plugin pipeline to boot and no store to reconcile, so the process begins working immediately.
Is flux free and open source?
- Flux is MIT licensed and developed in the open at github.com/callmegautam/flux. It is free for personal and commercial use, there is no paid tier, no account to create, and no telemetry. Every published binary is built from the same public repository you can read.
Is flux ready for production?
- Not yet. Flux is alpha software. It installs direct dependencies only, it does not walk the dependency tree, and it has no lockfile, so installs are not reproducible. Use it on side projects and experiments, and keep npm or pnpm for anything you ship.
How do I install flux?
- With Node 18 or later already installed, run npm install -g @iamgautamsuthar/flux. Without Node, run the install script: curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/callmegautam/flux/main/install.sh | sh on Linux and macOS, or the matching irm command in PowerShell on Windows.
Does flux need Node.js?
- Only if you install it from npm, where Node 18 or later is required. The standalone binary carries no runtime, so it works on a machine with no Node installed at all. Prebuilt binaries cover Linux, macOS and Windows on both Intel and ARM.
Does flux replace npm?
- It aims to. Flux talks to the same npm registry, reads and writes the same package.json, and installs into the same node_modules directory, so a project stays compatible with every other client. Until dependency tree resolution and a lockfile land, treat it as a companion rather than a replacement.
Where does flux cache packages?
- In your platform cache directory: $XDG_CACHE_HOME/flux or ~/.cache/flux on Linux, ~/Library/Caches/flux on macOS, and %LOCALAPPDATA%\flux\Cache on Windows. Set FLUX_CACHE_DIR to move it somewhere else, and run flux clear to empty it.