npm mithril + ospec binary conflict

[barneycarroll]

Following on from the discussion starting here in the chat.

Mithril's internal ospec is deprecated and console.warns to this effect on execution, recommending the canonical npm install of ospec. However, installing this as directed doesn't override Mithril's binary path binding for its internal ospec. From my tests, whichever is installed first, installing both mithril & ospec always results in the Mithril's ospec binding taking precedence; @orbitbot says he is able to get ospec to take precedence based on installation sequence, but I couldn't replicate.

The issue of conflicting binary path registrations in npm package dependencies has been raised at least a couple of times (npm#7130 & npm#9040) but the trail has run cold seemingly without resolution.

I've raised a discussion on the npm Github org feedback site – but maybe I ought to revive one of the issues above or file a new one?

In the meantime we might be able to advise a hack to account for the current deprecation warning's failure. 🤔

[orbitbot]

Even more alarmingly, I could not find an easy way to find the correct tests with the documented approach. We essentially end up in a situation where there all of a sudden appear false negatives based on our instructions, which implies that someone needs to be alert enough to roll back the local changes advertised as canonical.

[dead-claudia]

As a short-term fix, we could instruct users to just add a postinstall step that simply copies the right binary into node_modules.

[gilbert]

Just ran into this. Here's my package.json postinstall script solution:

  "scripts": {
    "postinstall": "ln -sf ../ospec/bin/ospec node_modules/.bin/ospec"
  },