title: Do I have to use Azure Artifacts to access private NPM packages?
body: <p>We have a frontend JS project that uses multiple public and private packages, all pointed at NPM's repositories. Our current build pipelines are AWS-based, and to acquire the private packages we just add an <code>.npmrc</code> file with the appropriate token at build time, then <code>npm install</code> (or actually <code>yarn install</code>) like normal. This works great, as local devs continue to point to NPM like a stock setup, and private access keys are managed either on a per-developer level or at the build level, with varying permissions.</p>
  
  <p>In evaluating Azure DevOps Pipelines we want to do the same, but all the recent instructions seem to require creating an Azure Artifacts fronting for NPM, and additionally using this mirror locally for development as well. That seems like overkill for something that already has an established pattern. Is following this path, running <code>vsts-npm-auth</code>, etc., all required for downloading the required dependencies, or can we just stick with a setup similar to what we have, inject the <code>.npmrc</code> file at build time, and install anyway?</p>