deno install can't find package npm:storybook-solidjs-vite, unless version is specified

[birkskyum]

deno 2.0.0-rc.4+0cb00a6

https://www.npmjs.com/package/storybook-solidjs-vite

If a version isn't provided, it doesn't install latest like i'd expect it to, but says the module was not found.

➜ deno i npm:storybook-solidjs-vite
error: npm:storybook-solidjs-vite was not found.

➜ deno i npm:[email protected]
Add npm:[email protected]

➜ deno i npm:storybook-solidjs-vite@latest      
Add npm:[email protected]

[marvinhagemeister]

Spent a bit debugging this:

The registry data looks like this:

{
  "name": "storybook-solidjs-vite",
  "dist-tags": {
    "latest": "1.0.0-beta.2"
  },
  "versions": {
    "1.0.0-beta.1": {
      // ...
    },
    "1.0.0-beta.2": {
      // ...
    }
  },
  "time": {
    "created": "2023-02-07T00:42:30.776Z",
    "1.0.0-beta.1": "2023-02-07T00:42:31.050Z",
    "modified": "2023-03-25T00:35:53.536Z",
    "1.0.0-beta.2": "2023-03-25T00:35:53.380Z"
  },
  // ...
}

We parse the package requirement as npm:storybook-solidjs-vite@* and then fail the semver comparison check here

deno/cli/npm/mod.rs

Line 136 in 37cedef

.find(|v| req.version_req.tag().is_none() && req.version_req.matches(v))

According to the npm docs the npm install command will always default to the latest tag if no version or tag requirement is specified, see https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v10/commands/npm-install#description . There apparently is an option to configure that in npm, but I've never heard of anyone changing that, so we can probably ignore that.

But npm also allows you to do npm install foo@* which is different from npm install foo (= npm install foo@latest).

I think this issue uncovers two different bugs in our npm installation logic:

1. Our semver version comparison seems to ignore pre-release version when matching with *
2. We don't default to adding @latest when no version or tag is specified for npm packages.

That means both of these commands fail at the moment:

1. deno i npm:storybook-solidjs-vite
2. deno i 'npm:storybook-solidjs-vite@*'