add publishConfig tag to package.json

[hex7c0]

if you have aim to publish another 5.x preview
maybe can be useful, to publish it with unstable tag instead of latest

[dougwilson]

Well, it wad never published as the tag "latest", just with no tag. I didn't tag it because as far as I know, there are no standard tags, as well as tags cannot be deleted (so 5 months after 5.0 is released, the old 5.x previews would still be listed as the current unstable).

[dougwilson]

Basically, what is the benefit?

[hex7c0]

hi doug,
I meant an approach like mongoose
if you want to test unstable release, you can try with npm install express@unstable

[dougwilson]

Sure, but how will people know to do that?

[Fishrock123]

we can tell them? idk, npm does a similar thing.

[hex7c0]

4.10.6 has the latest tag http://registry.npmjs.org/express/latest

similar to https://github.com/LearnBoost/mongoose/wiki/Development-(unstable)-branch-details

[dougwilson]

we can tell them?

right... be we're already telling them to npm install express@5, so i don't see how that's different since we have to choose what to tell them anyway.

The biggest problem with this is you cannot delete tags on npm, so once i tag something as "unstable", something will always have to be tagged unstable in npm, even if we never have something unstable to publish for a year and people will just keep installing pre-5.0 stuff forever.

[hex7c0]

when branch is in beta, you can use whatever tag and publish X version (5.0.0-alpha.1, 5.0.0-alpha.2, etc), so I just use npm install express@whatever to install latest whatever version;
the difference is that you can use a tag for publish different versions of whatever stuff
(and tell to people to use @whatever and publish new versions without change it)

When branch is ready, just remove publishConfig option from package.json (and change version to 5.0.0)
Of course you cannot delete tags, but you can use a 5-dev tag like v2.0-next npm
just a different point of view, sorry if I wrong

[dougwilson]

If we can come up with a tag and a good reason, I may use it, but we definitely don't need it in package.json in order to do so, because you can simply use the --tag option on npm publish.