ipfs-core-types is incorrectly built on npm

[siepra]

• Version:
  ipfs-core-types@0.8.4

Severity:

High

Description:

When installed with npm, package is missing "dist" folder.
It works well if built and linked locally

Steps to reproduce the error:

Use ipfs-core-types package installed with npm

[welcome]

Thank you for submitting your first issue to this repository! A maintainer will be here shortly to triage and review.
In the meantime, please double-check that you have provided all the necessary information to make this process easy! Any information that can help save additional round trips is useful! We currently aim to give initial feedback within two business days. If this does not happen, feel free to leave a comment.
Please keep an eye on how this issue will be labeled, as labels give an overview of priorities, assignments and additional actions requested by the maintainers:

• "Priority" labels will show how urgent this is for the team.
• "Status" labels will show if this is ready to be worked on, blocked, or in progress.
• "Need" labels will indicate if additional input or analysis is required.

Finally, remember to use https://discuss.ipfs.io if you just need general support.

[siepra]

I've added temporary workaround in my project but I'm looking forward to find that problem fixed as it holds me back a little bit ;)

[achingbrain]

ipfs-core-types doesn't have a dist directory on publish, the dist directory created during build is the published artifact.

This sounds like the typesVersions field needs an additional wildcard - how do I replicate the problem with your project?

[siepra]

Actually I'm able to reproduce this outside of my project. I'm doing this like this:

apple@MacBook-Pro-Apple Application Support % cd /tmp
apple@MacBook-Pro-Apple /tmp % mkdir test
apple@MacBook-Pro-Apple /tmp % cd test  
apple@MacBook-Pro-Apple test % npm init 
This utility will walk you through creating a package.json file.
It only covers the most common items, and tries to guess sensible defaults.

See `npm help init` for definitive documentation on these fields
and exactly what they do.

Use `npm install <pkg>` afterwards to install a package and
save it as a dependency in the package.json file.

Press ^C at any time to quit.
package name: (test) 
version: (1.0.0) 
description: 
entry point: (index.js) 
test command: 
git repository: 
keywords: 
author: 
license: (ISC) 
About to write to /private/tmp/test/package.json:

{
  "name": "test",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
  },
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC"
}


Is this OK? (yes) yes
apple@MacBook-Pro-Apple test % npm i --save ipfs-core-types
npm notice created a lockfile as package-lock.json. You should commit this file.
npm WARN native-fetch@3.0.0 requires a peer of node-fetch@* but none is installed. You must install peer dependencies yourself.
npm WARN test@1.0.0 No description
npm WARN test@1.0.0 No repository field.

+ ipfs-core-types@0.8.4
added 16 packages from 57 contributors and audited 16 packages in 5.703s
found 0 vulnerabilities

apple@MacBook-Pro-Apple test % cd node_modules/ipfs-core-types/src 
apple@MacBook-Pro-Apple src % find .
.
./swarm
./swarm/index.ts
./pin
./pin/index.ts
./diag
./diag/index.ts
./bootstrap
./bootstrap/index.ts
./root.ts
./config
./config/index.ts
./bitswap
./bitswap/index.ts
./dht
./dht/index.ts
./dag
./dag/index.ts
./utils.ts
./key
./key/index.ts
./object
./object/index.ts
./refs
./refs/index.ts
./files
./files/index.ts
./pubsub
./pubsub/index.ts
./log
./log/index.ts
./index.ts
./name
./name/index.ts
./repo
./repo/index.ts
./stats
./stats/index.ts
./block
./block/index.ts
apple@MacBook-Pro-Apple src % 

As you can see, for example file src/config/profile/index.ts is not included in the installed directory.

Interestingly I tried building the package locally from checkout using:

npm run build
npm pack

In this case the resulting package had all the files in src. So I'm not really sure what went wrong, it seems that building scripts are fine, just this particular build in npm is broken.

[flynnhou]

I'm encountering the same problem! I hope the team has some time to fix this soon!

[flynnhou]

So I made an experiment with a fork (flynnhou@796ba40) for my project too. I'm not an expert on TypeScript and the copyfile tool, and so I'm not sure if my attempt is clean. Basically, installing ipfs-core comes with ipfs-core-types, where the package contained an incomplete structure of the original src; only index.* were copied but the nested folders weren't.

TL;DR

Removing the problematic built node_modules/ipfs-core-types/src will solve the issue. Just like what @siepra mentioned in the above linked issue!

Ad Hoc Workaround

Since I didn't spend too much time getting familiar with js-ipfs project development, I didn't fully get how to install my fork repo as an alternative in the entire build flow. My ugly ad hoc workaround is that in package.json (see below), install "ipfs-core": "^0.13.0" as usual. Meanwhile, add a postinstall npm script to remove the src folder: "postinstall": "rm -rf node_modules/ipfs-core-types/src". At least it works for my project for now!

{
  "scripts": {
    "postinstall": "rm -rf node_modules/ipfs-core-types/src"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "ipfs-core": "^0.13.0",
  }
}

[siepra]

@achingbrain any thoughts on that?

[BigLep]

Maintainers will check in on this during 2022-03-04 triage.