@vltpkg/package-info

Get information about packages.

A spiritual descendant of pacote.

Usage

import {
  manifest,
  tarball,
  packument,
  resolve,
} from '@vltpkg/packge-info'

// get the full packument for the named package

// note that the '@2' part of the spec is irrelevant here,

// if it's a semver range.

console.log(await packument('bar@2'))

// get the manifest for a single version, resolving it.

console.log(await manifest('foo@latest'))

// get the tarball as a Buffer

const tarballBuffer = await tarball('foo@1.x')

// just figure out what it resolves to

const { resolved, integrity } = await resolve('bar@latest')

Global store

With the store-linker option set to auto, hardlink or copy, extract() places a registry package from its global store entry (<storeRoot>/<integrity hex>, storeRoot defaults to <cache>/store/v1) when there is one. On a miss it unpacks the cached tarball as usual and queues it for the background child, so the next install finds it in the global store. Missing or unknown store-linker means unpack. The vlt CLI defaults to auto, which it resolves to unpack on platforms other than Linux, so extract() only ever sees auto from the CLI on Linux. A gzipped cached tarball that is not store-linked (unpack, git or remote tarballs, no sha512 integrity) is queued too, so the child un-gzips it.

Packages with install scripts are copied, never linked: when the store index says so, or with the installScripts extract option.

A store link logs its request as store, a copy from the store as cache. Both also return manifest (the package.json as JSON text, if the index has it) and bindingGyp, so reify need not read them back from disk. With NODE_DEBUG=vlt, linked / copied / missed counts and the store hit rate are printed at exit.