Replace request with needle

[cktang88]

Closes #340

[springmeyer]

Looks good, thanks for putting this together. Only test that is failing is unrelated. For the sake of our future selves, can you share why you chose needle? After that I'll plan to merge.

[cktang88]

@springmeyer I choose needle for the following reasons (in no particular order):

1. Had similar configuration and functionality to request, so that few changes to /lib/install.js would be needed (specifically, needed to support proxy and HTTP headers)
2. Seems to be widely used, reliable, and actively developed (1.28 million downloads/month)
3. Very lightweight, few dependencies

[ovaar]

What about got

[LinusU]

Name	Downloads 1	Bundle size 2
simple-get	1,747,443	80kB
got	11,009,114	156kB
needle	1,231,722	556kB
request	39,390,626	??? 3

1: from npmjs.com
2: from bundlephobia.com
3: it timed out, so probably quite large 😄

I personally prefer got because it strikes a good balance between size and popularity, is maintained by some of the most known people within the node ecosystem, and has an excellent api!

[cktang88]

If you consider actual disk size, on my Win10 (NTFS file system), needle is 635kb, while got is 564kb, so a difference of only 71kb. Although I admit simple-get is a lot smaller. Also, for what it's worth, needle only installs 5 packages, while got installs 44.

[cktang88]

Hmmm.... if we are going to have a discussion about all the possible replacement options, I believe axios should also get a mention. It's only 14kb according to bundlephobia.com which beats all three options mentioned thus far by a long shot, and has 5.8mil downloads/month.

[LinusU]

The problem with adding axios and superagent to my list is that they have an alternative browser implementation, which makes there size "lie" for our use case... Listing sizes from bundlephobia.com is actually not a good idea at all, it was just the first tool I found 😄

The best would be to try and install them in a clean directory and then measuring disk size, hopefully I'll get some time for that this evening

[LinusU]

Okay, here is a list using actual install sizes, which is a much better measurement for our use case:

Name	Downloads 1	Installed size 2
axios	5,802,061	588kB
got	11,009,114	1260kB
needle	1,231,722	888kB
request	39,390,626	5800kB
simple-get	1,747,443	140kB
superagent	6,061,245	1852kB

1: from npmjs.com
2: from running echo {} > package.json; npm i $NAME; du -sk . in an empty directory

[ovaar]

@LinusU are these production installs?

[LinusU]

@ninox92 yes 👍

[springmeyer]

Thanks for the extra details and discussion here. I like the idea of going out with needle now since it ranks well for size but does not require code changes.

[springmeyer]

v0.9.0 is now published with this PR included.