Node.js Foundation Modules Team Meeting 2019-07-17

[mhdawson]

Time

UTC Wed 17-Jul-2019 19:00 (07:00 PM):

Timezone	Date/Time
US / Pacific	Wed 17-Jul-2019 12:00 (12:00 PM)
US / Mountain	Wed 17-Jul-2019 13:00 (01:00 PM)
US / Central	Wed 17-Jul-2019 14:00 (02:00 PM)
US / Eastern	Wed 17-Jul-2019 15:00 (03:00 PM)
London	Wed 17-Jul-2019 20:00 (08:00 PM)
Amsterdam	Wed 17-Jul-2019 21:00 (09:00 PM)
Moscow	Wed 17-Jul-2019 22:00 (10:00 PM)
Chennai	Thu 18-Jul-2019 00:30 (12:30 AM)
Hangzhou	Thu 18-Jul-2019 03:00 (03:00 AM)
Tokyo	Thu 18-Jul-2019 04:00 (04:00 AM)
Sydney	Thu 18-Jul-2019 05:00 (05:00 AM)

Or in your local time:

• http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Node.js+Foundation+Modules%20Team+Meeting+2019-07-17&iso=20190717T19
• or http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=07PM+UTC%2C+Jul+17%2C+2019+in+local+time

Links

• Minutes Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vjst5ibYykhzdEcFCMhUHSLDY3N84gKr8bEr-JXpVfQ/edit

Agenda

Extracted from modules-agenda labelled issues and pull requests from the nodejs org prior to the meeting.

nodejs/modules

• Package Exports #341

Invited

• Modules team: @nodejs/modules

Observers/Guests

Notes

The agenda comes from issues labelled with modules-agenda across all of the repositories in the nodejs org. Please label any additional issues that should be on the agenda before the meeting starts.

Joining the meeting

• link for participants: https://zoom.us/j/656987750
• For those who just want to watch: https://www.youtube.com/c/nodejs+foundation/live

[hybrist]

I also added the agenda label to the two modules feature PRs:

• esm: support loading data: URLs node#28614
• Implement "exports" proposal node#28568

[hybrist]

Also, I'd like to start chatting about resource loading / loader hooks since that seems like a big ominous object hanging over our heads so far. There's an intern here at Google (@a-lxe) that has been working on a project that could really benefit from a clean resource API, especially one that supports CJS as well.

Any objections to having him at this meeting and potentially give a quick overview about what he's planning in that area?

[clarkbw]

@ljharb recommended I take the GitHub Package Registry agenda detailed here to this meeting. Happy to join.

(edit: adding in full agenda text)

---

👋I'd like to join this meeting and discuss some package namespace concepts the GitHub Package Registry team is considering. We would value your input on the direction we're taking.

Single source of truth

For simplicity and security GPR (the GitHub Package Registry) plans to provide a system for "upstreaming NPM" such that our users only need to add a single registry URL to their config.

npm login --registry=https://npm.pkg.github.com

Through this single URL users should have access to both NPM packages and those packages which reside on GPR. However we have been running into issues with namespace conflicts with the NPM registry given its global name resolution and separate namespace system.

Namespace Problems

GitHub offers namespaces through organizations (https://github.com/nodejs/), users (https://github.com/clarkbw), and repos (https://github.com/nodejs/TSC/ or https://github.com/clarkbw/jest-localstorage-mock). But our namespaces are often different from those namespaces on NPM and this creates the conflict when trying to use a single source; who is correct if both have an answer.

For example our system currently allows you to require a module with a namespace. Without upstream support this isn't a problem but when we combine both our system and NPM you don't know which system namespace @octo-org should resolve to.

 "dependencies": {
 "@octo-org/octo-app": "1.0.0"
 }

This namespace conflict is apparent with namespaces google-cloud and GoogleCloudPlatform where the URLs are https://www.npmjs.com/org/google-cloud and https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform respectively. If a user specified @GoogleCloudPlatform and that was also registered on NPM it would be unclear what the user wanted and vice versa for @google-cloud and that namespace being on GitHub.

URLs as namespace

Our long term plan is to use URLs as a namespace prefix such that @octo-org/octo-app should actually be written as github.com/octo-org/octo-app. We believe this makes namespace resolution obvious and in control of the developers while also securing users from squatting attacks and being more future proof.

The problem we face when trying to use URLs is that the NPM client mostly assumes that a GitHub URL means direct git access to the repository as seen in the NPM docs. An npm install github.com/octo-org/octo-app or npm install https://github.com/octo-org/octo-app either fails or connects to the git server.

Protocol as namespace

An alternate version of the URL as namespace is using a protocol instead such that GPR requests are prefixed with github:. An npm install github:octo-org/octo-app isn't ideal like URLs are but would work if the NPM client didn't already use the github: protocol for direct git server access.

Hybrid solution

The GPR team would like to make progress on the longer term solution, we believe to be something like URL namespaces. At the same time we want to make forward progress on a solution that could work better in the next couple months.

We're looking at a number of different solutions for the near term that will allow our users to use GPR as expected while we work toward a more stable namespace solution like URLs. These solutions are purely temporary so we can get up and running without requiring changes to clients that take time to propagate out.

Namespace Prefix

One example temporary solution is to use a prefix on namespace like @gh- so users would enter @google-cloud/storage for the default NPM namespace and @gh-GoogleCloudPlatform/storage for the GitHub namespace. We are not in 😍with this.

---

We're humbled to be able to take part in this conversation and appreciate your time, thoughts, and advice on these proposals.

[Jamesernator]

Protocol as namespace

Personally I think a protocol solution would make a lot of sense, but given that Github is just acting an npm registry-provider why have a specific protocol for it rather than just a generic npm: protocol that can connect to any registry?

e.g.

// Get package from the github registry
"some-package": "npm://github.com/some-org/some-package",
// Get package from the npm registry
"some-package-2": "npm://registry.npm.org/some-package-2@2.0",
// Get package from custom registry
"some-package-3": "npm://registry.my-site.org/some-package-3"

Sure it's more verbose in the package.json but it's both incredibly clear where packages come from and is very extensible to many registries (and it only affects installing not import-ing).

[ljharb]

Note that anything like that (notation in package.json dependencies) would have to be something npm itself supported; so it's likely that our task is mostly going to be to come up with a united recommendation from us and the TSC, and leave it to npm to implement it.

[lirantal]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts @clarkbw, sounds like a great direction.
I wanted to mention the PURL spec (https://github.com/package-url/purl-spec#some-purl-examples) just-in-case this is unknown for some, as I think it connects well with the suggested approach and maybe it's worth to consider aligning with that (and perhaps contributing to that effort :-))

[hybrist]

This is the issue @a-lxe created earlier: #351

[MylesBorins]

hey all sorry for the delay, having zoom issues
hopefully have it set up asap

[mhdawson]

Would you like me to start the meeting instead?

[ljharb]

looks like someone did get this resolved, without pinging here?

[infin8x]

I'd like to join as well, working with @clarkbw on the GPR namespace concepts.