Install fails behind corporate proxy (SSH block?)

[brownieboy]

Do you want to request a feature or report a bug?
Feature request.

What is the current behavior?
Global install npm install -g webpack-cli fails behind a corporate proxy. Error is:

Error: Command failed: git -c core.longpaths=true config --get remote.origin.url

I suspect that this is because our corporate proxy blocks SSH access to the internet (as many of them do).

What is the expected behavior?
Install should not crash like this simply because SSH is unavailable.

If this is a feature request, what is motivation or use case for changing the behaviour?
We need an option to have the installer to execute its git clone tasks via HTTPS instead of SSH. At the very least, the installer should trap this error and tell the user what the problem is.

Please mention other relevant information such as the browser version, Node.js version, Operating System and programming language.
Windows 7, but it also happened on a Linux Mint VM behind the same corporate proxy.

[evenstensberg]

If you're cloning this instead of downloading directly, you can use https. Other than that, you can also download the source and run npm link within your shell to get the same behaviour as npm install -g webpack-cli. Did this help? :) Happy to elaborate!

[brownieboy]

Thanks for that very quick response, @ev1stensberg .

I've not used npm link before, but when I tried it I got the same error. My exact command steps were:

npm remove webpack-cli -g
git clone https://github.com/webpack/webpack-cli.git
cd webpack-cli
npm link

That seemed to kick the install process off again, eventually resulting in the same error.

Actually, the repository that seems to be triggering the error is git://github.com/kalcifer/recast.git. So maybe I need to clone that one (too)?

[evenstensberg]

It may be. You can change the package.json in the forked version to https, and it should in theory work for your case. Note that recast isn't the only forked repo, but also Yeoman-Generator.

https://coderwall.com/p/q_gh-w/fork-and-patch-npm-moduels-hosted-on-github

Also, I think you should use npm uninstall webpack-cli -g instead, remove isn't a valid command, is it?

npm link is a symlink that will allow you to execute the clone from any directory. Happy to help!

[evenstensberg]

Also a note to add is that we're removing these forks soon. For your SSH problems ->
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17509669/how-to-install-an-npm-package-from-github-directly

[brownieboy]

Thanks again, @ev1stensberg.

I think I'll wait until you've removed the forks from the installer.

FYI, remove is a valid alias to uninstall, see https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/uninstall. I should probably use the proper command though!

[evenstensberg]

Oooh, nitty! No need to wait, I think this is doable. Either do as in below picture and do npm link, or you could try out the SO link I've commented.

[brownieboy]

Thanks again. That got me a bit further, but I've hit new problems.

I was able to install webpack-cli using the npm link method. But trying to execute like so:

webpack-cli init webpack-addons-testcli

failed with the error

TypeError: Package isn't registered on npm.

No indication as to which package this is.

Also, the installation of webpack-cli caused some of my other globally installed packages to throw the error:

npm ERR! extraneous:

when I try to list them with an npm list -g --depth=0. This error went away when I uninstalled webpack-cli.

Thanks for your help, so far, but this is all getting a bit messy. I'd rather wait until you've removed the forks from the installer as you said.

[ghost]

Possibly setting this option could help:

> git config --global url."https://".insteadOf git://

~/.gitconfig

[url "https://"]
insteadOf = git://

[TheLarkInn]

@brownieboy Let me know if @dkfiresky 's suggestion was helpful or if we need to assist any further.

[anyulled]

@dkfiresky I'm having the same error nad tried your suggestion and it worked, thanks a lot.

[evenstensberg]

Can you send me your .gitconfig per mail @anyulled ? See patterns of this issue on windows, need some context around npm. Should work at our end.

[anyulled]

@ev1stensberg my .gitconfig only has this now:

[user]
name = alrs
email = myusername@somedomain.com
[url "https://"]
insteadOf = git://

[evenstensberg]

Can I get yours as well @brownieboy ?

[evenstensberg]

Any update on this?

[evenstensberg]

This is probably a dupe of #182, so let's resume discussion over there!

[ghost]

@ev1stensberg it's actually vise versa since this ticket was created earlier :)