I am a little confused about how Duo actually transforms dependencies into JS values. When I write, say,
var uid = require('matthewmueller/uid');
as in the home page example, what gets bound to the uid identifier?
The point is that a package manager does not only need to fetch dependencies, but also to specify relations between modules. This is why, for instance, Bower only does half the story (fetching) and it has to be coupled with a tool like Require.js to actually provide modules.
For clarity, let me make a comparison with the JVM. On the JVM, when one requires a class in a package, it is up to a classloader to find it. The default classloader will look up the class code in a directory structure based on the package name. Where to locate this directory structure is decided based on environment variables, but usually it ends up to having multiple entry points, either on the filesystem or inside zipped files called JARs. A separate tool, like Maven on SBT, can help you fetch JARs from repositories. But what actually makes everything click is the fact that once you have fecthed the JAR, you know where to locate classes inside it based on their name.
In the frontend world there just isn't such a standardization on paths, and this is what makes it difficult to locate a module even when the Github repo for it has been downloaded.
var uid = require('matthewmueller/uid');
as in the home page example, what gets bound to the uid identifier?
The point is that a package manager does not only need to fetch dependencies, but also to specify relations between modules. This is why, for instance, Bower only does half the story (fetching) and it has to be coupled with a tool like Require.js to actually provide modules.