[OE-core] npm.bbclass

[Christopher Lord]

I've been using npm.bbclass with various node projects we're working on in
the Connected Devices team at Mozilla, and had some questions/comments
about behaviour (note that I'm basing this off of ostro master, which I
unfortunately have to use as no other Intel Edison bsp is adequate);

- Is there a good reason the npm fetcher only works with a registry? It
seems it could get most (all?) pertinent information from a package.json in
the root of a repository.

- Is there a reason to split the package like it does? Node projects tend
to have huge dependency trees, it makes updating and distributing
node-based applications a bit of a chore if they end up split into 20
packages, most of which have no use separately. It would be great if there
was at least a way to disable this.

- The information about packaging non-registry software here:
https://wiki.yoctoproject.org/wiki/TipsAndTricks/NPM is incomplete - you
also need to generate a shrinkwrap and install that into the srcdir, or
you're very likely to get failures doing dependency resolution. Not an OE
issue, but I guess Yocto folks also read this list and it's related :)

- Any patches end up getting packaged because they get put in the srcdir.
I'm guessing this isn't intentional (or maybe it is?)

Just wanted to provide some feedback. It's fantastic that OE has the
ability to package node software, and despite the teething difficulties,
I've appreciated its availability!

Cheers,

--Chris
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