npm install fails to run on clean install

[justinhartman]

Describe the bug

I have been trying to run npm install (as well as npm run dev) on a fresh Laravel & Grafite CMS installation but continuously run into a NPM Unexpected end of JSON input while parsing near '...:false,"directories":' error for the buffer-indexof package. I am therefore unable to finalise the setup of Grafite CMS because NPM refuses to install whatever dependencies there may be.

To Reproduce

In a terminal window run the following commands. I've tried it in two different projects and the same error is reproduced every time.

$ composer create-project laravel/laravel grafite
$ composer require grafite/cms
$ php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Grafite\Cms\GrafiteCmsProvider"
$ php artisan grafite:cms-setup
$ npm install

Expected behavior

I don't know what I should be seeing when running npm install but I certainly do not expect to see errors. This is a show-stopper.

Terminal Output

After running php artisan grafite:cms-setup the following is outputted:

$ php artisan grafite:cms-setup
Copying routes...
Copying config...
Copying app/Http...
Copying app/Events...
Copying app/Listeners...
Copying app/Notifications...
Copying app/Models...
Copying app/Services...
Copying database...
Copying resources/views...
Copying tests...
Publishing theme

 Please confirm that you have a database set and configured in your .env file. (yes/no) [no]:
 > yes

Migrating database
Setting roles
Creating default account
Finished setting up your site with Grafite CMS!
You can now login with the following username and password:
[email protected]
admin
Please add to your app.scss:
@import '../../themes/default/assets/sass/_theme.scss';
Please run:
npm install
and:
npm run dev

This is expected. Now, when running npm install this is the error output:

$ npm install
npm WARN deprecated [email protected]: Browserslist 2 could fail on reading Browserslist >3.0 config used in other tools.
npm ERR! Unexpected end of JSON input while parsing near '...:false,"directories":'

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!     /Users/mbp/.npm/_logs/2018-10-01T21_59_50_434Z-debug.log

This is the key take-out from the debug.log file below. You can view the full debug log file here.

4139 silly resolveWithNewModule [email protected] checking installable status
4140 http fetch GET 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/buffer-indexof 11ms (from cache)
4141 silly fetchPackageMetaData error for buffer-indexof@^1.0.0 Unexpected end of JSON input while parsing near '...:false,"directories":'
4142 timing stage:rollbackFailedOptional Completed in 5ms
4143 timing stage:runTopLevelLifecycles Completed in 89595ms
...
4144 silly saveTree (with tons of output which is snipped in this report.....)
....
4145 verbose stack SyntaxError: Unexpected end of JSON input while parsing near '...:false,"directories":'
4145 verbose stack     at JSON.parse (<anonymous>)
4145 verbose stack     at parseJson (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/json-parse-better-errors/index.js:7:17)
4145 verbose stack     at consumeBody.call.then.buffer (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-fetch-npm/src/body.js:96:50)
4145 verbose stack     at <anonymous>
4145 verbose stack     at process._tickCallback (internal/process/next_tick.js:188:7)
4146 verbose cwd /Volumes/500GB/Mega/Code/GitLab/grafite
4147 verbose Darwin 17.7.0
4148 verbose argv "/usr/local/bin/node" "/usr/local/bin/npm" "install"
4149 verbose node v8.11.3
4150 verbose npm  v6.4.1
4151 error Unexpected end of JSON input while parsing near '...:false,"directories":'
4152 verbose exit [ 1, true ]

You can view my composer.json file here.

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• OS: macOS 10.13.6
• Node: v8.11.3
• NPM: 6.4.1
• Darwin: 17.7.0
• Composer: 1.6.5
• PHP: 7.2.7
• Laravel Framework 5.7.6
• Composer JSON file: composer.json

[justinhartman]

The buffer-indexof project was last updated on 22 August 2017 and that was hardly a commit worth noting. In truth, the last major change to the code happened on 1 September 2016 which was over 2 years ago.

I'm very worried that this package is basically dead. I don't know if you guys reference this project in your app directly, or if it forms part of another package's dependency, but I would recommend looking to move away from package. I can't see anything happening with this project in the future. EDIT: I discovered it is a dependency of dns-txt which was, last updated 3 years ago...