Unable to publish Github package

[Zenoo]

I am trying to setup a workflow that publishes a Github package, but I can't seem to make it work.

Here is a simplified workflow I created to try it:

https://github.com/Zenoo/slick-loader/blob/master/.github/workflows/npm-publish.yml

name: Node.js Package

on:
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  publish-gpr:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: read
      packages: write
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v2
        with:
          node-version: 12
          registry-url: https://npm.pkg.github.com/
      - run: npm publish
        env:
          NODE_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN}}

But the process always fails:

npm ERR! code E404
npm ERR! 404 Not Found - PUT https://registry.npmjs.org/slick-loader - Not found
npm ERR! 404 
npm ERR! 404  'slick-loader@1.1.35' is not in the npm registry.
npm ERR! 404 You should bug the author to publish it (or use the name yourself!)
npm ERR! 404 
npm ERR! 404 Note that you can also install from a
npm ERR! 404 tarball, folder, http url, or git url.

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!     /home/runner/.npm/_logs/2021-06-16T08_47_48_768Z-debug.log
Error: Process completed with exit code 1.

[anantoghosh]

Publishing to github requires some configurations:
https://docs.github.com/en/packages/working-with-a-github-packages-registry/working-with-the-npm-registry#publishing-a-package-using-a-local-npmrc-file

1. Your package name should have the scope with your github username @<username>/<packagename>.
2. Change the publish command for github to npm publish --@<username>:registry=https://npm.pkg.github.com/.
3. If you are releasing to npm registry too, change that npm publish to npm publish --access public. This will publish a scoped packaged to npm.

All this confusion arises from the expectation that the node publish workflow will just work right out of the box 😕 .

[Zenoo]

@anantoghosh What can I do if my package doesn't have the scope with my username?
The package has already been published on NPM for a long time, I can't just rename it.
Same for your second and third point: My package name doesn't contain a scope ^^'

[anantoghosh]

Even though there are some comments saying that this should be possible #73 (comment) #243 (comment), all possible combinations of configurations I tried did not solve the issue.

As a hack I though I could rename the package name to add the scope in the gpr action but then I start getting this problem #215, using npm config (because I was installing a global package for editing the json and needed to set npm prefix) causes the / after scope to get encoded into %2f which I was unable to fix with multiple different configurations.
I searched briefly through github to find other packages which tried this and all but two failed in publishing to gpr.
https://github.com/bats-core/bats-core/blob/eac1e9d047b2b8137d85307fc94439c90bdc25ae/.github/workflows/release.yml#L51
They are using npm init --scope username to rename the package and this works for me too, gpr publish works, but using npm init in my project adds dependencies into the package.json file which I don't need so this was a no go too.

https://github.com/hujiulong/vue-3d-model/blob/master/scripts/gpr-setup.js
They are using a node script to rename, this is what I went with too (modified for type: "module"):

// gpr-hack.js
import { writeFileSync, readFileSync } from "fs";

const file = readFileSync("./package.json", {
  encoding: "utf-8",
});

const json = JSON.parse(file);

json.name = "@name/pkgname";

writeFileSync("./package.json", JSON.stringify(json, undefined, 2));

Final solution looks like this:

publish-gpr:
    needs: build
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: read
      packages: write
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v2
        with:
          node-version: 14
          registry-url: https://npm.pkg.github.com/
          scope: "@name"
      - run: node gpr-hack.js
      - run: npm ci
      - run: npm run build
      - run: npm publish
        env:
          NODE_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN}}

It took me quite some time to get this to work mainly due to #215, this may also cause trouble if npm config were to be used eg: for installing global packages.

note: yarn may behave differently

[Zenoo]

Thanks a lot ! It works with the GPR hack.
I will probably create a plug & play action that handles both npm and Github packages, it's too much of a hassle to expect anyone to use this.