Issue with 8.1.1 - JSPM Permission denied

[nwhite89]

I'm using postcss-import with webpack since the update to 8.1.1 and using the pkg-resolve module I am getting an error when running

Unable to create jspm system folder
Error: EACCES, permission denied '/home/ubuntu/.jspm'

When I am running my project I don't have permissions to this folder and I believe it's unnecessary also I'm not entirely sure why jspm is even needed to be installed? It's not even used by postcss-import. For now to get this working I have had to downgrade to 8.1.0 any help on this would be greatly appreciated :).

Thanks.

[MoOx]

Sorry for this @nwhite89. I am not even using jspm myself.

This is related to #194 that I accepted.
I guess it's because you ran into an undefined file, which end up in the catch handled by this PR.

@swernerx any idea how we can make the resolve optional? (only used in jpsm env)

[nwhite89]

@MoOx thanks for your quick reply what is the reasoning to use pkg-resolve? Looking at the code change I can't quite follow the necessity for using the package.

[MoOx]

It's to ensure JSPM support (but to be honest, I blindly trusted @swernerx, so we should wait for his input).

[swernerx]

Oops. That sounds "interesting". I never saw that issue here.

Yep, pkg-resolve is for resolving jspm which is a pretty useful package manager for resolving the front-end part of typical webapps.

I am not sure what happens there on your system that it throws such an error. JSPM seems to try to create the "~/.jspm" folder during runtime. The questions is why this raises an error at all. Shouldn't the app be able to create config files in the home directory?

JSPM uses the folder for user wide "global" caching of dependencies, etc. This is not implemented in "pkg-resolve" which is just querying "jspm" for its package registry.

[MoOx]

EACCES, permission denied

Can be a "read" issue.

Is there a way to detect during runtime that we are in jspm env? Because if not, using pkg-resolve will only leads to error (eg: npm + postcss only). We should avoid that.

[swernerx]

It seems like JSPM is pretty intolerant with any unexpected situations regarding this folder. It throws with hard exceptions for any cases were:

• The home directory is not writable
• The directory exists but is not writeable
• There is a file which uses the same name instead of a directory.

I figure for me "jspm" should ignore all of these failed attempts and maybe present a warning instead of crashing.

[swernerx]

It does not seems like a "read" error but a "write" error. JSPM fails to create the folder ".jspm" in the home folder. I do not think that is exactly something wrong.

[swernerx]

@MoOx I am not sure what you mean by "jspm" environment... the error is all around a folder which should be created in the user's home directory. This is not project related as I understand.

[MoOx]

I mean: if I use npm only (not jspm), I won't expect jspm to throw an error.

[MoOx]

The pkg-resolve should not even be used if user is in a classic node/npm runtime.

[swernerx]

Sure, but the questions is how would you even figure out whether someone uses jspm...