`dependencyVersionFormat: 'file'` has no affect [bug]

[snspinn]

`dependencyVersionFormat: 'file'` has no affect [bug]

[milesj]

So the default setting was reverted in npm 9.4.2. Might explain why my system settings were changed. Moral of the story; careful when updating npm 😆

Gotta love it.

npm changing this setting was probably my first thought and downgrading probably would have helped.

Glad you got this sorted! Will close this for now.

[milesj]

@snspinn moon doesn't actually manage the node_modules folder, so any linking happening is being done by npm.

The dependencyVersionFormat setting just controls what the version format is for dependencies in package.json, so you should see stuff like file:../path/to/package. Are you seeing file: entries?

[snspinn]

@milesj I was afraid that might be the case but thought I'd put this here anyway to see if anyone had an answer. I appreciate you responding regardless.

Yes, I am seeing file: entries like this:

"dependencies": {
    "my-package": "file:../../../libraries/package",
     ...
  },

I don't seem to be able to find detailed documentation on how npm works so apologies for my ignorance. Have a few debugging steps in mind now. Will report back if I find a fix.

[snspinn]

I've tried a few things such as upgrading npm but no change yet. Will try downgrading npm at some point.

For now I have found a work around:
After doing the npm install...

cd <working-dir>/node_modules
cp -rL package/ package-tmp #Copy dir with dereference 
rm -r package/
mv package-tmp/ package/

[snspinn]

Found a comment under a discussion here npm/cli#6033 (comment) that has given me a fix for now.

I ran npm config set install-links=true which allowed me to run my npm install tasks again (can't think of when this flag would have been changed). It leads me to wonder: I have a locally installed npm and an npm installed with proto. Do all installs of npm share this config set or is there a way to set them private to proto installed tools?

✗ npm --version
9.8.1
✗ proto list npm
10.8.1

Additional

So the default setting was reverted in npm 9.4.2. Might explain why my system settings were changed. Moral of the story; careful when updating npm 😆