Depend on a branch or tag using a git URL in a pac

Question

Say I've forked a node module with a bugfix and I want to use my fixed version, on a feature branch of course, until the bugfix is merged and released.

How would I reference my fixed version in the dependencies of my package.json?

Answer 1

On latest version of NPM you can just do:

npm install gitAuthor/gitRepo#tag

If the repo is a valid NPM package it will be auto-aliased in package.json as:

{ "NPMPackageName": "gitAuthor/gitRepo#tag" }

If you could add this to @justingordon 's answer there is no need for manual aliasing now !

Answer 2

If you want to use devel or feature branch, or you haven’t published a certain package to the NPM registry, or you can’t because it’s a private module, then you can point to a git:// URI instead of a version number in your package.json:

"dependencies": {
   "public": "git://github.com/user/repo.git#ref",
   "private": "git+ssh://[e-mail]:user/repo.git#ref"
}

The #ref portion is optional, and it can be a branch (like master), tag (like 0.0.1) or a partial or full commit id.

Answer 3

per @dantheta's comment:

As of npm 1.1.65, Github URL can be more concise user/project. npmjs.org/doc/files/package.json.html You can attach the branch like user/project#branch

So

"babel-eslint": "babel/babel-eslint",

Or for tag v1.12.0 on jscs:

"jscs": "jscs-dev/node-jscs#v1.12.0",

Note, if you use npm --save, you'll get the longer git

From https://docs.npmjs.com/files/package.json#git-urls-as-dependencies

Git URLs as Dependencies

Git urls can be of the form:

git://github.com/user/project.git#commit-ish git+ssh://user@hostname:project.git#commit-ish git+ssh://user@hostname/project.git#commit-ish git+http://user@hostname/project/blah.git#commit-ish git+https://user@hostname/project/blah.git#commit-ish

The commit-ish can be any tag, sha, or branch which can be supplied as an argument to git checkout. The default is master.

GitHub URLs

As of version 1.1.65, you can refer to GitHub urls as just "foo": "user/foo-project". Just as with git URLs, a commit-ish suffix can be included. For example:

{ "name": "foo",
"version": "0.0.0",
"dependencies": { "express": "visionmedia/express", "mocha": "visionmedia/mocha#4727d357ea" } }

Answer 4

From the npm docs:

git://github.com/<user>/<project>.git#<branch>

git://github.com/<user>/<project>.git#feature\/<branch>

As of NPM version 1.1.65, you can do this:

<user>/<project>#<branch>