[OE-core] [PATCH v3 00/17] NPM refactoring

[Richard Purdie]

On Wed, 2019-11-20 at 10:33 +0100, Jean-Marie LEMETAYER wrote:
> The current NPM support have several issues:
>  - The current NPM fetcher downloads the dependency tree but not the other
>    fetchers. The 'subdir' parameter was used to fix this issue.
>  - They are multiple issues with package names (uppercase, exotic characters,
>    scoped packages) even if they are inside the dependencies.
>  - The lockdown file generation have issues. When a package depends on
>    multiple version of the same package (all versions have the same checksum).
> 
> This patchset refactors the NPM support in Yocto:
>  - As the NPM algorithm for dependency management is hard to handle, the new
>    NPM fetcher downloads only the package source (and not the dependencies,
>    like the other fetchers) (patch submitted in the bitbake-devel list).

I'm a little confused by this item.

If the NPM fetcher only downloads a given package's source and it has
dependencies, where/when are the dependencies downloaded?

My worry here is that if the fetcher isn't downloading them, DL_DIR
can't contain all the needed pieces needed to reproduce a build at a
later date?

I suspect I'm missing something obvious...

Cheers,

Richard