Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

add "obey user specifier" RFC #547

Open
wants to merge 1 commit into
base: main
Choose a base branch
from
Open
Changes from all commits
Commits
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension

Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
33 changes: 33 additions & 0 deletions accepted/0000-obey-user-specifier.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -0,0 +1,33 @@
# obey the user's specifier

## Summary

When I type `npm install package@specifier`, a normalized `specifier` is what should be saved to `package.json`, no more, no less.

## Motivation

Currently, if i type `npm install --save-dev eslint@=8.0.0 other`, it installs v8.8.0, but saves `^8.8.0` to `package.json` (with the default `save-prefix` of `^`). (note: i'm intentionally not using `--save-exact` here, because i want `other` to install using the default `save-prefix`).

When no `@version` is provided, or when a dist-tag is provided, it makes *perfect* sense to resolve that to a version, and save it with `save-prefix`. However, when I've provided a version range - `=1.2.3`, `~1.2.3`, `>= 1.2` - I know what I want, I’ve explicitly told npm I want it, and npm should obey my wishes not just in the reification in `node_modules` (which I believe it does), but also in what it saves to `package.json`.

## Detailed Explanation

When a non-dist-tag version range is provided, and a range signifier is included, persist it to `package.json`.

## Rationale and Alternatives

1. split my command into two - `npm install --save-dev --save-exact eslint@=8.8.0 && npm install --save-dev other`
1. manually edit my `package.json` afterwards (this is what i currently do)
1. weep in the rain, alone again, in front of my telephone box

## Implementation

I assume this information which is currently discarded or misplaced inside Arborist would need to be persisted.

## Prior Art

Generally speaking, tools all do what you explicitly ask them to do :-) it’d be nice if npm did too.

## Unresolved Questions and Bikeshedding

Would this be considered a bugfix or a breaking change? If a breaking change, how could we ship it as a semver-minor where i could set a persistent config in my user npmrc?