Stop telling users to e-mail me

[ForbesLindesay]

Like the vast majority of package maintainers, my preferred method for receiving bug reports is on GitHub. Apart from anything, most people who go to GitHub realise that someone else has already had their problem and solved it. Unfortunatley npm keeps telling them to email me:

npm/lib/utils/error-handler.js

Lines 203 to 204 in 2724e30

	'You can get their info via:',
	' npm owner ls ' + er.pkgname,

Could we direct them to the relevant github issues instead?

[stephnr]

I dont immediately see how this is even feasible. How would you go about building it?

[aredridel]

Ooh, if there's repository data in the package.json, that could be a lot better!

[kenany]

Something like this?:

diff --git a/lib/utils/error-handler.js b/lib/utils/error-handler.js
index cd61f79..a8364b4 100644
--- a/lib/utils/error-handler.js
+++ b/lib/utils/error-handler.js
@@ -200,8 +200,8 @@ function errorHandler (er) {
         'not with npm itself.',
         'Tell the author that this fails on your system:',
         '    ' + er.script,
-        'You can get their info via:',
-        '    npm owner ls ' + er.pkgname,
+        'You can report this error here:',
+        '    npm bugs ' + er.pkgname,
         'There is likely additional logging output above.'
       ].join('\n')
     )

[stephnr]

I like that idea @kenany , and then just make sure to provide a CONTRIBUTING.md file in your project

[shri3k]

I really like how Atom handles this. I believe they just check the error msg/status(?) and also checks if it's already been posted in github and allows you to jump to the posted issue. Not sure if it's quite feasible in npm but that would definitely bring down number of tickets in issue tracker too.

[ForbesLindesay]

It should be possible for cases where the project is hosted in GitHub (and has the repository field configured correctly).

[juliangruber]

@trodrigues's change above looks good to me

[othiym23]

This is fixed in npm@3 by b25efc8, which somebody will need to backport to npm@2 if they want it there. Thanks to @trodrigues for the fix!

[trodrigues]

Also added it for npm@2 at #10628