Because the npm client is a hot mess?
The official npm cli is quite old and evolved along with all the different coding styles and architecture choices of the node and JS ecosystems.
It's also full of dependencies on originally purpose-built modules that suffer from the same problems. This compounds various issues, resulting in long-standing bugs like `npm publish` sometimes not actually including all files in the tar bundle it generates[0].
NPM 3 was a partial rewrite but it's still built on the same mountain of code as NPM 2 and 1. npm Inc developers have in the past complained about not being able to address issues for a lack of resources despite having a ton of developers on the team[1].
The official npm client also doubles as an account management CLI to the npm registry. Which apparently npm Inc now considers a design flaw as they recently started creating a standalone tool for managing other aspects of their commercial services[2].
And finally it's important to understand that having a new package manager that is not tied into npm Inc means it's easier to replace the npm registry as the official node module registry in the future. Which would allow the community to get rid of the privileged position npm Inc currently holds in the node distribution (which is otherwise governed by the Node Foundation).
Rewriting the client from scratch actually turned out to be the sanest approach in this situation, I think.
[0]: https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/5082
[1]: https://github.com/npm/humans
[2]: https://npmjs.org/package/wombat
The official npm cli is quite old and evolved along with all the different coding styles and architecture choices of the node and JS ecosystems.
It's also full of dependencies on originally purpose-built modules that suffer from the same problems. This compounds various issues, resulting in long-standing bugs like `npm publish` sometimes not actually including all files in the tar bundle it generates[0].
NPM 3 was a partial rewrite but it's still built on the same mountain of code as NPM 2 and 1. npm Inc developers have in the past complained about not being able to address issues for a lack of resources despite having a ton of developers on the team[1].
The official npm client also doubles as an account management CLI to the npm registry. Which apparently npm Inc now considers a design flaw as they recently started creating a standalone tool for managing other aspects of their commercial services[2].
And finally it's important to understand that having a new package manager that is not tied into npm Inc means it's easier to replace the npm registry as the official node module registry in the future. Which would allow the community to get rid of the privileged position npm Inc currently holds in the node distribution (which is otherwise governed by the Node Foundation).
Rewriting the client from scratch actually turned out to be the sanest approach in this situation, I think.
[0]: https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/5082
[1]: https://github.com/npm/humans
[2]: https://npmjs.org/package/wombat