npm Azure Artifacts feed doesn't install all dependencies from upstream source

Question

Trying to set up a proof-of-concept for the place I work using a private npm registry to limit the packages developers can download. I set up a feed on Azure Artifacts, and set the official npm registry (https://registry.npmjs.org) as the only upstream source. This feed was set as the registry in the npmrc file, and the project is correctly identifying that as the registry source. (per npm config get registry).

When a user (with permissions to install from upstream) tries to install a package from the empty feed, it installs the package (from the upstream) correctly along with all of its dependencies. It also saves the package to the Artifacts feed, but only some of its dependencies are saved to the feed. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to which dependencies it saves, as it changes almost every time I install the same exact package.

When a user that does not have permission to install from an upstream source tries to install that same package, it fails on one of the dependencies that wasn't saved, giving a 404 error for the artifacts feed, saying that the package was not found in the registry.

I've set up quite a few different feeds, both project-scoped and organization-scoped to see if I perhaps fiddled with the wrong settings/set something up wrong, but I get the same behavior with every feed I set up.

Are there certain criteria that determine whether or not a dependency is downloaded, and is there a way that I can make it so all dependencies are saved to the feed when a package is installed from the upstream?

Answer 1

Are there certain criteria that determine whether or not a dependency is downloaded

npm has a local cache. You'll want to run npm cache clean before testing. Otherwise, there's no guarantee that the package will be downloaded. It may be installed from the cache instead.

and is there a way that I can make it so all dependencies are saved to the feed when a package is installed from the upstream?

I suppose you can try disabling the cache, but that will likely greatly inflate installation times for your users. You may only want to do that while testing. That said, there are various somewhat-hacky ways to do it more permanently-ish. You can use the force config option but that has other side effects. I imagine you can set the cache to be /dev/null or something like that, although I've never tried that. There are other ideas in the answers provided to the "Disable npm cache" Stackoverflow question.