Latest Development is Default

[kodypeterson]

When running "npm install express" it is fetching 4.0.0-rc2 - This is the development version. When running "npm install express" against default registry I get version 3.4.8 - the latest stable as expected.

[rlidwka]

A few months ago it was a deliberate choice to work around an npm update bug that actually downgrades versions:

$ npm install express@4
$ npm ls | grep express@
└─┬ express@4.0.0-rc2
$ npm update
$ npm ls | grep express@
└─┬ express@3.5.0

Bug exists in my npm@1.3.11, but can't reproduce it with latest npm, so it's probably fixed. So I'll probably be ok with reverting that.

---

Anyway, most people expect to install the highest version instead of the latest one (see npm/npm#3397). So it seem to be a desirable behaviour.

[kodypeterson]

Hmm, this is interesting.

Can you point me in the direction for backing out this change? Maybe the PR for the change?

[rlidwka]

I think you can remove just two lines: one, two, and this particular issue will be gone.

But it might not be a complete solution due to the fact that sinopia is designed to provide some useful fallback in case npm registry is down.

So it deals with tags a bit differently. They are stored as the arrays, and highest available one is returned. It is done because tagged version may not always be available (i.e. latest is 3.5.0, but npm registry is down, so we should return another tag).

So in theory if express maintainers mark 4.0.0-rc as the latest, but switch tag to 3.5.0 after that, sinopia will assume that both versions are tagged, and return the highest one.

[rlidwka]

Okay, starting from sinopia@0.8.0 "latest" tag now works like all other tags.

If somebody has old npm version and wants to ignore it like it was before, set "ignore_latest_tag" to "true".