npm tarballs - Offline Deployments from .cache

[sray]

I have been following the recommendations in https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/4210 and https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/3429 for bundling a nodejs application and deploying it using a packaged node_modules and .cache directory within the tarball (described in https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/3429#issuecomment-17718608). Until npm integrates the discussed workflow into an npm core command, this seemed the easiest and most straight forward way to realize an offline deployment solution. I use a separate release branch, in which I maintain an npm-shrinkwrap.json to lock dependency versions for tagged release commits. I generate the tarballs from those tagged commits, so it is theoretically possible to reproduce an identical older release tarball if necessary for debugging later.

I would love to also utilize the excellent monitoring strongloop provides. To be able to do that, strongloop needs to provide a tarball deployment step, that a) does not trigger a git commit (both local-deploy.js and pack-receiver.js trigger one) b) that runs npm install with custom arguments, for performing an offline deployment using the "cache-min" workaround (described here: https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/5509#issuecomment-53724715).

I would be happy to submit a PR, but wanted to discuss the best way to implement these two things first. For a) I would add an argument to slc deploy like --without-vcs, --no-vcs-update or --dont-commit or anything else, you think is a good name. If you would prefer to handle this differently, let me know your thoughts. For b) I would add an argument to slc deploy like --npm-args which is passed on to the npm install command, for offline deployments it's usage would look like: --npm-args="--cache=.cache --cache-min 99999. Or do you have a more suitable idea in mind?

If you prefer single characters as command line arguments (or would like to provide both short and long commands), let me know which characters I should use.

Any feedback would be much appreciated!

Are there any automated tests or js linting that I can run to ensure I do not break anything or divert from strongloop coding styles?

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been closed due to continued inactivity. Thank you for your understanding.