VCS Files With Colons Cause Errors Trying To Install

[mearns]

• Version: v5.6.0
• Platform: Ubuntu Linux (Linux vagrant-ubuntu-trusty-64 3.13.0-85-generic test: fix test-fs-symlink-dir-junction-relative #129-Ubuntu SMP Thu Mar 17 20:50:15 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux)
• Subsystem: readable-stream

I'm getting an error trying to install version 5.6.0, specifically trying to unpack the tar file on Ubuntu Linux. The problem seems to be that some VCS conflict files were left behind in the readable-stream module which contain colons in the file name, and tar if trying to interpret these as a remote file.

Technically, I'm still able to unpack the remaining files, but the tar command exits with a non-zero exit code as a result, so automated installations (such as nvm) fail.

Here are commands that reproduce this:

$ wget https://nodejs.org/dist/v5.6.0/node-v5.6.0-linux-x64.tar.xz
4 unxz node-v5.6.0-linux-x64.tar.xz
$ tar -xf node-v5.6.0-linux-x64.tar >/dev/null
tar: node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/LICENSE~8d21794... deps\: upgrade npm to 3.6.0: Cannot open: Protocol error
tar: node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/LICENSE~8d21794... deps\: upgrade npm to 3.6.0_0: Cannot open: Protocol error
tar: node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/duplex.js~8d21794... deps\: upgrade npm to 3.6.0: Cannot open: Protocol error
tar: node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/writable.js~8d21794... deps\: upgrade npm to 3.6.0: Cannot open: Protocol error
tar: node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/.npmignore~8d21794... deps\: upgrade npm to 3.6.0: Cannot open: Protocol error
tar: node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/node_modules/string_decoder/index.js~8d21794... deps\: upgrade npm to 3.6.0: Cannot open: Protocol error
tar: node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/node_modules/string_decoder/README.md~8d21794... deps\: upgrade npm to 3.6.0: Cannot open: Protocol error
tar: node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/node_modules/string_decoder/LICENSE~8d21794... deps\: upgrade npm to 3.6.0: Cannot open: Protocol error
tar: node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/node_modules/string_decoder/.npmignore~8d21794... deps\: upgrade npm to 3.6.0: Cannot open: Protocol error
tar: node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/node_modules/core-util-is/README.md~8d21794... deps\: upgrade npm to 3.6.0: Cannot open: Protocol error
tar: node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/node_modules/core-util-is/float.patch~8d21794... deps\: upgrade npm to 3.6.0: Cannot open: Protocol error
tar: node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/node_modules/core-util-is/lib/util.js~8d21794... deps\: upgrade npm to 3.6.0: Cannot open: Protocol error
tar: node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/node_modules/isarray/index.js~8d21794... deps\: upgrade npm to 3.6.0: Cannot open: Protocol error
tar: node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/node_modules/isarray/README.md~8d21794... deps\: upgrade npm to 3.6.0: Cannot open: Protocol error
tar: node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/node_modules/isarray/component.json~8d21794... deps\: upgrade npm to 3.6.0: Cannot open: Protocol error
tar: node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/passthrough.js~8d21794... deps\: upgrade npm to 3.6.0: Cannot open: Protocol error
tar: node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/transform.js~8d21794... deps\: upgrade npm to 3.6.0: Cannot open: Protocol error

To be explicit, here is the collection of filenames that contain colons, that are causing tar to have problems:

$ tar tf ./node-v5.6.0-linux-x64.tar | grep 'readable-stream[^:]*:'
node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/LICENSE~8d21794... deps: upgrade npm to 3.6.0
node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/LICENSE~8d21794... deps: upgrade npm to 3.6.0_0
node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/duplex.js~8d21794... deps: upgrade npm to 3.6.0
node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/writable.js~8d21794... deps: upgrade npm to 3.6.0
node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/.npmignore~8d21794... deps: upgrade npm to 3.6.0
node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/node_modules/string_decoder/index.js~8d21794... deps: upgrade npm to 3.6.0
node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/node_modules/string_decoder/README.md~8d21794... deps: upgrade npm to 3.6.0
node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/node_modules/string_decoder/LICENSE~8d21794... deps: upgrade npm to 3.6.0
node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/node_modules/string_decoder/.npmignore~8d21794... deps: upgrade npm to 3.6.0
node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/node_modules/core-util-is/README.md~8d21794... deps: upgrade npm to 3.6.0
node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/node_modules/core-util-is/float.patch~8d21794... deps: upgrade npm to 3.6.0
node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/node_modules/core-util-is/lib/util.js~8d21794... deps: upgrade npm to 3.6.0
node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/node_modules/isarray/index.js~8d21794... deps: upgrade npm to 3.6.0
node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/node_modules/isarray/README.md~8d21794... deps: upgrade npm to 3.6.0
node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/node_modules/isarray/component.json~8d21794... deps: upgrade npm to 3.6.0
node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/passthrough.js~8d21794... deps: upgrade npm to 3.6.0
node-v5.6.0-linux-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/readable-stream/transform.js~8d21794... deps: upgrade npm to 3.6.0

[mearns]

Ok, I accidentally left out a really important detail. This occurred on a Vagrant box running from a Windows machine, in the shared /vagrant directory. Meaning it was trying to unpack into an NTFS filesystem, which is what was actually causing the errors.

I would argue that the files still shouldn't be in there (it's bloat anyway), and there's no reason I shouldn't be able to install on an NTFS filesystem on Linux, but this is admittedly an corner case.

To add just a little bit of justification for this issue, I'm developing on Windows, and testing on a vagrant box, using nvm to manage which version of node we're developing against. Being able to test in the same directory as where I'm developing (i.e., the shared NTFS directory) seems like a reasonable use case.

[mscdex]

This was a known issue with npm, upgrade your version of node and it should be fine.