[Pkg-javascript-devel] Bug#940511: Re: Bug#940511: yarnpkg: Package symlink yarn -> yarnpkg

[Maël Nison]

Hi, I'm Maël, Yarn's lead maintainer.

While cmdtest has a popcon score higher than the yarn package, it's mostly
because Yarn isn't traditionally installed using the Debian package. For
historical reasons the 1.x branch always updated it, but in general our
users install Yarn using it's "competitor", npm. The npm numbers give a
very different picture: Yarn is downloaded 6.1m times per month.

There are currently talks to, potentially, ship symlinks for the three main
package managers along with Node (npm, which is already there, along with
Yarn and maybe pnpm). These plans aren't concrete yet, but a few people
think it's worth studying. In any case, the decision is expected to be
taken for Node 15, which will happen this year. To the extent possible, I
think it could be wise (and very appreciated!) to consider renaming the
`yarn` binary from `cmdtest` before it risks becoming an actual problem.

As a last note, I pinged Lars Wirzenius (who I think was the original
cmdtest maintainer?), back in March '19. He mentioned having recently
retired, but seemed fairly supportive of the idea ("I've now discussed the
name of our testing tool with its other developer and we will likely change
the name of our program during the Debian buster+1 development cycle").

Maël

On Mon, 16 Sep 2019 16:41:00 +0200 "Xavier" <yadd at debian.org> wrote:
> Control: tags -1 + wontfix
>
> Le Lundi, Septembre 16, 2019 16:02 CEST, Melvin Vermeeren <
vermeeren at posteo.net> a écrit:
> > Package: yarnpkg
> > Version: 1.13.0-1
> > Severity: normal
> >
> > Upstream calls the binary itself yarn as yarnpkg appears to have been
> > deprecated. Packaging as yarnpkg for backwards-compatibility is
understandable,
> > though I believe a symlink yarn -> yarnpkg should be added as tools and
scripts
> > nowadays typically check only for yarn.
> >
> > For example a problem occurs when installing GitLab from source, it
only checks
> > for yarn during the rake task and complains it cannot be found. A local
symlink
> > /usr/local/bin/yarn -> /usr/bin/yarnpkg resolved the issue.
> >
> > (Alternatively, perhaps make yarn the primary installation and symlink
the
> > legacy yarnpkg -> yarn.)
> >
> > Thanks.
>
> Debian has already a /usr/bin/yarn file given by cmdtest. cmdtest has a
better "popcon" than yarnpkg, that's why we won't change this for now.
>
> Cheers,
> Xavier
>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://alioth-lists.debian.net/pipermail/pkg-javascript-devel/attachments/20200520/b397bc13/attachment.html>