Fixes npm/cli#2800: npm outdated fails to parse aliases

[IceCreamYou]

Currently, with a package.json like this:

{
  "name": "test-outdated-alias",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "dependencies": {
    "foo": "npm:abbrev@^1.1.1"
  }
}

Running npm outdated produces an error because npm-pick-manifest throws an error when it sees the alias package type:

test-outdated-alias$ npm outdated --verbose
// snipped for brevity...
npm verb stack Error: Only tag, version, and range are supported
npm verb stack     at pickManifest (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/npm-pick-manifest/index.js:93:11)
npm verb stack     at module.exports (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/npm-pick-manifest/index.js:187:16)
npm verb stack     at Outdated.getOutdatedInfo (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/lib/commands/outdated.js:229:22)
npm verb stack     at async Promise.all (index 5)
npm verb stack     at async Outdated.exec (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/lib/commands/outdated.js:72:5)
npm verb stack     at async module.exports (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/lib/cli.js:66:5)

So this PR changes npm-pick-manifest so that when it sees a package of type alias, it looks at its subSpec instead, basically ignoring the alias.

References

This fixes npm/cli#2800. I do not know if there is other code that relies on npm-pick-manifest failing on aliases, but I doubt it.

[IceCreamYou]

@ruyadorno do you think you could give this a look? 🙏 Not sure if there's an active maintainer of this project but I see you made changes somewhat recently.

[IceCreamYou]

@isaacs maybe you could take a look? (Hello 👋 to another Isaac S!)

[ruyadorno]

hi @IceCreamYou thank you for your contribution, unfortunately this won't quite work as expected. I tried the patch on my local environment and it only bypasses the error but still won't work 😞 it looks to me that the outdated command will still need a bit more custom logic in order to properly follow and display the aliased packages.

[ruyadorno]

Thanks to your PR I was pushed in a good direction and found what appears to be a complete solution to that problem, ref: npm/cli#4365 😄 thanks again for the help!