Supported input formats

[oBusk]

While working on #354, I need somewhere to jot down what kind of inputs we want to support so that we can make sure we handle all the inputs that npm diff handles.

Commands used to create the table below

To get npa().type; node -p 'require("npm-package-arg")("<INPUT>").type'
To see if npm diff works; npm diff --diff=chalk --diff=<INPUT> package.json
To see if libnpmmdiff supports; node -e 'require("libnpmdiff")(["chalk", "<INPUT>"]).then(console.log)'

npm-package-arg types

/**
 * One of the following strings:
 * * git - A git repo
 * * tag - A tagged version, like "foo@latest"
 * * version - A specific version number, like "[email protected]"
 * * range - A version range, like "[email protected]"
 * * file - A local .tar.gz, .tar or .tgz file.
 * * directory - A local directory.
 * * remote - An http url (presumably to a tgz)
 */
type:
    | "git"
    | "tag"
    | "version"
    | "range"
    | "file"
    | "directory"
    | "remote"
    | "alias";

Most cases will be range, version and tag.

We can obviously ignore file and directory since they are irrelevant as a service.

git and remote are interesting and could be investigated. if npm diff supports it, we could try to do it.

Same goes for alias

Supported Inputs

Taking suggestions from

• https://semver.npmjs.com/ for basically all the range cases
• https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v7/commands/npm-install for the git, alias, and remote

Description	Input	npa().type	npm diff Supports	npmlibdiff Supports
Just package name	chalk	tag	✅	✅
Latest	chalk@latest	tag	✅	✅
Next	chalk@next	tag	✅	✅
Package@version	[email protected]	version	✅	✅
Package@pre-relase version	[email protected]	version	✅	✅
Range	chalk@^1	range	✅	✅
Range	[email protected]	range	✅	✅
Range	chalk@~1.0	range	✅	✅
Range	[email protected]	range	✅	✅
Range	chalk@>1.0.0	range	✅	✅
Range	chalk@^3.0.0-beta	range	✅	✅
Range	[email protected] - 2.3	range	✅	✅
Multiple sets	chalk@2^ || ^3	range	✅	✅
Alias	myalias@npm:chalk	alias	✅	✅
/	chalk/chalk	git	✅	✅
:/	github:chalk/chalk	git	✅	✅
/#	chalk/chalk#b68c8b5	git	✅	✅

Special cases where package is

Conclusions

• I don't know anyway to input the < > operators into CLI since they are read as pipe operators