&gt; The short reason is that NPM is the most straightforward way to get a script installed as a global binary in a cross-platform manner<p>Really ? All Unix-like systems (incl OS X) can do this:<p><pre><code>    &#x2F;usr&#x2F;bin&#x2F;install myscript.sh &#x2F;usr&#x2F;local&#x2F;bin
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PS: Oh, just realized that there is <i>npm uninstall</i> as well, but not &#x2F;usr&#x2F;bin&#x2F;uninstall (though it&#x27;s just rm -f anyway)