Performance for `npm` could be even more faster?

[dalisoft]

:zap: Summary

Hi @evilmartians team/contributors

Tuning npm package could lead into performance improvements and reducing startup execution.

Opened similar PR/Issue on other projects but impossible to check locally due of hard running local or lacking of running locally easier script.

• https://github.com/dprint/dprint/pull/839/files & https://github.com/dprint/dprint/pull/840/files
• https://github.com/biomejs/biome/pull/2359/files
• https://github.com/oxc-project/oxc/pull/2920/files

As these PR not merged into neither of them, so first decided to ask from you

Value

Command	Mean [ms]	Min [ms]	Max [ms]	Relative
../lint-staged.sh	154.3 ± 2.8	151.1	159.3	1.00
lint-staged	306.9 ± 6.1	300.3	320.8	1.99 ± 0.05
lefthook run pre-commit	202.8 ± 4.4	197.3	210.1	1.31 ± 0.04
./lefthook run pre-commit	162.7 ± 3.2	160.4	170.7	1.05 ± 0.03

Behavior and configuration changes

If npx is not important, can be tuned for using lefthook binary from optionalDependencies or prepare script can download and change binary for main npm package bin field.

Test script locally for you

postinstall.js

import { prepare, maps } from "binary2npm";

maps.os = {
  linux: "Linux",
  freebsd: "Freebsd",
  darwin: "MacOS",
  win32: "Windows",
};
maps.arch = {
  arm64: "arm64",
  x64: "x86_64",
  x86: "x86_64",
};

await prepare({
  remote: "github",
  author: "evilmartians",
  repository: "lefthook",
  remoteToken: process.env.GITHUB_TOKEN,
  binary: "lefthook",
  orders: ["binary", "version", "os", "arch"],
});

• Try run node postinstall.js
• Then benchmark direct running versus using custom bin.js from npm package

[mrexox]

Hey! Lefthook actually implements different ways of distribution. We have lefthook package that utilized optionalDepdencies, we have @evilmartians/lefthook-installer which downloads the binary in a postinstall step and we have @evilmartians/lefthook which simply contains all the binaries.

So, what is your suggestion for improvement? And what is the problem with current npm packages you see?

[dalisoft]

I looked into other ways of distribution and it is actually 30% slower than suggested improvements.

I am suggesting using direct binary for package.json like {"bin":"lefthook.exe"} or {"bin":"lefthook"} so no additional overhead when executing lefthook from CLI Currently no problem but only 30% performance loss and after improvement CLI speed for npm could be improved by 30%

[mrexox]

Oh, I see. Ok, I agree, it would be great to have this improvement.

[dalisoft]

@mrexox See #705 please