Any plan to submit npm to Factory?

[marguerite]

Forgot to CC opensuse-packaging ML.

Hi, Joachim,

Can we submit npm w/ all its dependencies and related tools like gyp to Factory before Beta?

npm is now a separate package, thus the nodejs in Factory is now not able to build anything nodejs. But there're packages in Factory seem to rely on npm to build.

So we now face a mut-be-done choice:

1. fix the packages in Factory by the "manual copy" method to avoid using of npm
2. drop the packages (and even nodejs itself) from Factory, guide our users to use d:l:nodejs to develop their nodejs applications.
3. submit the splitted stuff to Factory, which will be ?50 packages, before Beta.

BTW, I don't like the "manual copy" method, which is:

1. changeable over releases (if upstream add new files, your package will success anyway)
2. too much things needed to be judged by human-being (like which one to copy?)
3. it may needs a local test environment for the packager, which will force the packager to be a real nodejs developer. So it'll break our BURP way of packaging.

and actually this method can be done by robots like things done by our perl CPAN robots. It undervalues human-being, or even challenges human-being because we are much more easy to get things wrong than a robot.

But anyway this way is super fast, we can package 50 packages for one night.
Anyway if we want to keep both ways of packaging ("manual copy" && "patch package.json") available, we still need to make a decision whether or not to submit those development tools to Factory.

Marguerite��칻�&�zf���^�ˬz����"���˛���m�)z{.��+

[Joachim Gleissner]

Hi Marguerite,

On Sat, 20 Sep 2014 20:42:11 +0800

Post by marguerite
Hi, Joachim,
Can we submit npm w/ all its dependencies and related tools like gyp
to Factory before Beta?

Yes, of course. I actually wanted to do that on Friday but had to leave
the office on short notice.

Post by marguerite
npm is now a separate package, thus the nodejs in Factory is now not
able to build anything nodejs. But there're packages in Factory seem
to rely on npm to build.

I split it off because I figured just for running the prepackaged
node.js packages, npm is not required so why force installing it.

Post by marguerite
1. fix the packages in Factory by the "manual copy" method to avoid
using of npm 2. drop the packages (and even nodejs itself) from
Factory, guide our users to use d:l:nodejs to develop their nodejs
applications. 3. submit the splitted stuff to Factory, which will
be ?50 packages, before Beta.

I think we'll want to have node.js support in Factory eventually, so we
might as well go ahead and submit them.

Post by marguerite
1. changeable over releases (if upstream add new files, your package
will success anyway) 2. too much things needed to be judged by
human-being (like which one to copy?) 3. it may needs a local test
environment for the packager, which will force the packager to be a
real nodejs developer. So it'll break our BURP way of packaging.
and actually this method can be done by robots like things done by
our perl CPAN robots. It undervalues human-being, or even challenges
human-being because we are much more easy to get things wrong than a
robot.

I agree in theory that having a generic installation method is
preferable to doing it manually, however the npm local install command
has its downside too IMHO. npm install simply copies the whole package
into the node_modules directory, including documentation, test files,
potentially included packages the package depends on, even dotfiles
like .gitignore. This means you have to manually clean up after npm
anyway, which kinda defeats the point of using it.

Post by marguerite
But anyway this way is super fast, we can package 50 packages for one
night. Anyway if we want to keep both ways of packaging ("manual
copy" && "patch package.json") available, we still need to make a
decision whether or not to submit those development tools to Factory.

Given that npm was in Factory before we actually removed functionality,
so I think it should go back in asap. I'll submit it.

Btw, thanks for fixing all the spec files.

Cheers
Joe

[marguerite]

Hi, Joachim,

Post by Joachim Gleissner
Yes, of course. I actually wanted to do that on Friday but had to leave
the office on short notice.

I'm working on it. and sent some of the packages Factory...
there're still 50% packages unsent.

Post by Joachim Gleissner
I agree in theory that having a generic installation method is
preferable to doing it manually, however the npm local install command
has its downside too IMHO. npm install simply copies the whole package
into the node_modules directory, including documentation, test files,
potentially included packages the package depends on, even dotfiles
like .gitignore. This means you have to manually clean up after npm
anyway, which kinda defeats the point of using it.

Unlikely I found that...so forgot what I've said.

Once concern is:

Dependencies to bootstrap NPM are about 100 nodejs packages.

And it's growing. e.g. nodejs-request has new version, which introduces
10 dependencies, which further introduces another 10 dependencies...

So do an update for npm is really painful now...

Another concern is:

Maybe the update doesn't mean to update everything to the latest verisons.
e.g. If npm wants some specific versions...that'll be painful again...

By now we didn't take the version requirements in package.json into consideration,
So if someday bugs happened because of that, it might be impossible to debug so many
Javascripts...

Marguerite��칻�&�zf���^�ˬz����"���˛���m�)z{.��+

[Joachim Gleissner]

Hi Marguerite,

On Mon, 22 Sep 2014 22:58:40 +0800

Post by marguerite

Post by Joachim Gleissner
Yes, of course. I actually wanted to do that on Friday but had to
leave the office on short notice.

I'm working on it. and sent some of the packages Factory...
there're still 50% packages unsent.

Ok, cool.

Post by marguerite

Post by Joachim Gleissner
I agree in theory that having a generic installation method is
preferable to doing it manually, however the npm local install
command has its downside too IMHO. npm install simply copies the
whole package into the node_modules directory, including
documentation, test files, potentially included packages the
package depends on, even dotfiles like .gitignore. This means you
have to manually clean up after npm anyway, which kinda defeats the
point of using it.

Unlikely I found that...so forgot what I've said.
Dependencies to bootstrap NPM are about 100 nodejs packages.
And it's growing. e.g. nodejs-request has new version, which
introduces 10 dependencies, which further introduces another 10
dependencies...
So do an update for npm is really painful now...
Maybe the update doesn't mean to update everything to the latest
verisons. e.g. If npm wants some specific versions...that'll be
painful again...
By now we didn't take the version requirements in package.json into
consideration, So if someday bugs happened because of that, it might
be impossible to debug so many Javascripts...

Both true. I find packaging node.js modules generally quite tedious.
They are often very small, sometimes just one js file with one function
in it, but it's the way it is. I don't really have a good idea to do it
differently.

However, to deal with the large number of packages I had to submit, I
wrote a script to fetch module information from registry.npmjs.org,
download the tarball, and generate the spec file. It's a bit basic at
the moment (e.g. it doesn't take version numbers of dependencies into
account), but I guess it could be extended to handle that and also to
handle updates rather than new packages only. Due npm registry and the
(mostly) uniformity of node modules, those tasks are fairly well
scriptable which could take some of the pain away. I'll look into it.

Regards
Joe

[Darin Perusich]

Post by Joachim Gleissner
Hi Marguerite,
On Mon, 22 Sep 2014 22:58:40 +0800

Post by marguerite

Post by Joachim Gleissner
Yes, of course. I actually wanted to do that on Friday but had to
leave the office on short notice.

I'm working on it. and sent some of the packages Factory...
there're still 50% packages unsent.

Ok, cool.

Post by marguerite

Post by Joachim Gleissner
I agree in theory that having a generic installation method is
preferable to doing it manually, however the npm local install
command has its downside too IMHO. npm install simply copies the
whole package into the node_modules directory, including
documentation, test files, potentially included packages the
package depends on, even dotfiles like .gitignore. This means you
have to manually clean up after npm anyway, which kinda defeats the
point of using it.

Unlikely I found that...so forgot what I've said.
Dependencies to bootstrap NPM are about 100 nodejs packages.
And it's growing. e.g. nodejs-request has new version, which
introduces 10 dependencies, which further introduces another 10
dependencies...
So do an update for npm is really painful now...
Maybe the update doesn't mean to update everything to the latest
verisons. e.g. If npm wants some specific versions...that'll be
painful again...
By now we didn't take the version requirements in package.json into
consideration, So if someday bugs happened because of that, it might
be impossible to debug so many Javascripts...

Both true. I find packaging node.js modules generally quite tedious.
They are often very small, sometimes just one js file with one function
in it, but it's the way it is. I don't really have a good idea to do it
differently.
However, to deal with the large number of packages I had to submit, I
wrote a script to fetch module information from registry.npmjs.org,
download the tarball, and generate the spec file. It's a bit basic at
the moment (e.g. it doesn't take version numbers of dependencies into
account), but I guess it could be extended to handle that and also to
handle updates rather than new packages only. Due npm registry and the
(mostly) uniformity of node modules, those tasks are fairly well
scriptable which could take some of the pain away. I'll look into it.

Is this script you mention available? I've been holding off on
packaging a few nodejs packages, puppet-explorer specifically, due to
not wanting to get into the dependency nodejs hell that npm was about
to unleash.

[Joachim Gleissner]

Hi,

On Tue, 23 Sep 2014 12:15:22 -0400
Darin Perusich <***@darins.net> wrote:

[...]

Post by Darin Perusich

Post by Joachim Gleissner
However, to deal with the large number of packages I had to submit, I
wrote a script to fetch module information from registry.npmjs.org,
download the tarball, and generate the spec file. It's a bit basic at
the moment (e.g. it doesn't take version numbers of dependencies into
account), but I guess it could be extended to handle that and also to
handle updates rather than new packages only. Due npm registry and the
(mostly) uniformity of node modules, those tasks are fairly well
scriptable which could take some of the pain away. I'll look into it.

Is this script you mention available? I've been holding off on
packaging a few nodejs packages, puppet-explorer specifically, due to
not wanting to get into the dependency nodejs hell that npm was about
to unleash.

I haven't looked into writing a more general-purpose node.js packaging
script yet. So far I only have that script to create new node packages.
If that's of any use for you, I can send it to you.

Regards
Joe

[Darin Perusich]

Post by Joachim Gleissner
Hi,
On Tue, 23 Sep 2014 12:15:22 -0400
[...]

Post by Darin Perusich

Post by Joachim Gleissner
However, to deal with the large number of packages I had to submit, I
wrote a script to fetch module information from registry.npmjs.org,
download the tarball, and generate the spec file. It's a bit basic at
the moment (e.g. it doesn't take version numbers of dependencies into
account), but I guess it could be extended to handle that and also to
handle updates rather than new packages only. Due npm registry and the
(mostly) uniformity of node modules, those tasks are fairly well
scriptable which could take some of the pain away. I'll look into it.

Is this script you mention available? I've been holding off on
packaging a few nodejs packages, puppet-explorer specifically, due to
not wanting to get into the dependency nodejs hell that npm was about
to unleash.

I haven't looked into writing a more general-purpose node.js packaging
script yet. So far I only have that script to create new node packages.
If that's of any use for you, I can send it to you.

That would be useful, please send it ;-)