The javascript ecosystem seems to have a tonne of tools - this is particularly daunting to a person like me who doesn't work in web-dev since the choices are way too many.

• npx:
  • Lets you run npm packages without permanently installing them. Generally used to call packages that initially set up the project structure from templates or other such infrequently used tools. Comes bundled with the nodejs installer. So you probably already have it installed.
• degit
  • A tool that clones the current state of a git repo but without git revision history and so things tend to be faster than a full git clone. Uses github by default - so one only needs to provide a github relative package path like sveltejs/template. Used by svelte to get initial project scaffolding from a repo in github.
• rollup
  • A module bundler. Takes multiple javascript files and bundles them together
    • typically used to generate a single redistributable javascript file. Uses ES6 modules.
• webpack
  • A module bundler. Extremely configurable tool that can bundle css, javascript, html and also supports preprocessing the individual modules before bundling them together

References

• Svelte for new developers