Package Managers and DevOps: npm, Git, GitHub, Docker, Jenkins, Kubernetes and AWS CloudFormation

Package Managers and DevOps is the fifth volume of the Web Coding Series. You install dependencies with npm, Yarn, pnpm and Bun, keep every version with Git, review and test each change on GitHub, package the result with Docker, build it on your own Jenkins server, deploy it to Kubernetes, and declare its cloud infrastructure with AWS CloudFormation. One service, BookNest, a bookshop API on Node.js and PostgreSQL, runs through all seven chapters, each tool picking up where the last stopped.

Every example was run. The commands were executed in Ubuntu 26.04 under WSL2 with Git 2.55, Docker Engine 29.8, Jenkins LTS 2.568.3 and Kubernetes 1.37 on a kind cluster, and the listings show their actual output. The GitHub chapter runs on a real account, with steps that need an organization marked as not run here. CloudFormation stacks are deployed to LocalStack 4.13.1, the last free Community release line of the AWS emulator, so you need no AWS account; where LocalStack and real AWS differ, the book shows the two side by side.

What you will learn

Package managers: how npm, Yarn, pnpm and Bun install the same project, their lockfiles and layouts, a real benchmark, Corepack, registries, apt, Homebrew, winget, Snap and Flatpak, and supply-chain attacks.

Git: the object model, branching, merging, interactive rebase, remotes, tags, worktrees, bisect, the reflog, submodules, hooks, Git LFS and signed commits.

GitHub: tokens and the gh CLI, pull requests, rulesets and merge queues, GitHub Actions with matrices, caching, environments, reusable workflows and OIDC, Dependabot, CodeQL and the APIs.

Docker: namespaces and cgroups, images and layers, a production Dockerfile, multi-stage builds, BuildKit and Buildx, Compose, registries, scanning and signing, Swarm and Podman.

Jenkins: controllers, agents and durable Pipelines, Declarative and Scripted Pipeline, multibranch builds from GitHub, shared libraries, Configuration as Code, Job DSL, security and upgrades.

Kubernetes: the control plane and reconciliation loop, Pods, Deployments, Services, Ingress and the Gateway API, storage, StatefulSets, autoscaling, RBAC, Pod Security and NetworkPolicies, Helm, Kustomize, operators and GitOps with Argo CD.

AWS CloudFormation: template anatomy and intrinsic functions, change sets, nested stacks, custom resources and macros, drift detection, IAM, cfn-lint and cfn-guard, AWS SAM, CDK beside Terraform and Pulumi, and deploying from GitHub Actions.

Why this book is different

The commands were executed, not imagined. Where the documentation and the real behavior disagreed, the book reports what actually happened.

One BookNest service is carried from its first dependency to its cloud stack, so every tool does real work on the same code.

It explains what happens under the hood, from Git's object store and Linux container isolation to the Kubernetes control plane and the CloudFormation engine.

Honest comparisons of open-source and commercial alternatives, from GitLab to Podman and Terraform.

Hundreds of listings, diagrams and screenshots, reference appendices and an index of open-source tools.

Ten "Test Yourself!" questions end every chapter, and every answer was produced by running the code.