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It's still weird. Why not just use an effing install.sh script like everybody else? And don't tell me "security". Because after installation you will be running an unknown binary anyway.
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Most people aren't going to have npm installed though. Nobody outside of web devs uses it.
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A lot of people who are not web devs use it, that's what I see. I even saw some mainframe developers use npx to call some tool on some data dump.

Also, this is a web project anyway. Google Workspace is web based, so while there is a good chance that the users aren't web developers, it's a better chance that they have npm than anything else.

In the case that they don't, releases can be downloaded directly too: https://github.com/googleworkspace/cli/releases

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If you had to pick one package manager that was most likely installed across all the different user machines in the world, I'd say npm is a pretty good bet.
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"Most people" are webdevs

Bracing for getting cancelled

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Why not just downloadable binary then?
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For many, installing something with npm is still easier. It chooses the right binary for your OS/architecture, puts it on your PATH, and streamlines upgrades.

Their Github releases provides the binaries, as well as a `curl ... | sh` install method and a guide to use github releases attestation which I liked.

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I feel better with `curl ... | sh` than with npm.

npm suggests projects written in js, which is not something I'm comfortable.

It is nice to see that this is not JS, but Rust.

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Agreed! The `curl ... | sh` is sketchy, but it's more obviously a security risk and easier to inspect. With install hooks, `npm install ...` also allows arbitrary code execution when you run it, but this is less obvious.
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Hmm, that's right... thanks..
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