zlacker

That number is misleadingly low, because it doesn't include Next.js which bundles the dependency. Almost all usage in the wild will be Next.js, plus a few using the experimental React Router support.

>>ascorb+(OP)
As far as I'm aware, transitive dependencies are counted in this number. So when you npm install next.js, the download count for everything in its dependency tree gets incremented.

Beyond that, I think there is good reason to believe that the number is inflated due to automated downloads from things like CI pipelines, where hundreds or thousands of downloads might only represent a single instance in the wild.

>>root_a+Bn
It's not a transitive dependency, it's just literally bundled into nextjs, I'm guessing to avoid issues with fragile builds.

>>root_a+Bn
why is it not normal for CI pipelines to cache these things? its a huge waste of compute and network.

>>swyx+0F
It's certainly not uncommon to cache deps in CI. But at least at some point CircleCI was so slow at saving+restoring cache that it was actually faster to just download all the deps. Generally speaking for small/medium projects installing all deps is very fast and bandwidth is basically free, so it's natural many projects don't cache any of it.

>>swyx+0F
These often do get cached at CDNs inside of the consuming data centers. Even the ISP will cache these kind of things too.