Preview build setup sometimes results in installation failures

[Gudahtt]

It seems that the GitHub registry we have setup for the preview builds isn't mirroring packages from npm.

As a consequence, you may see installation failures non-preview @metamask packages when using an .npmrc file setup to point at the GitHub registry. I've found that I can get past the error by ensuring the non-preview packages are installed locally before putting the .npmrc file in-place. This is a viable workaround but it requires frequently adding and removing this file, which is rather inconvenient.

[Gudahtt]

I was unable to find any way to configure Yarn/npm or GitHub to support looking at this custom registry first, then falling back to npm.

We may want to investigate alternatives to GitHub Packages. Or perhaps we could write a script to sync all of our npm packages to the GitHub registry.

[BelfordZ]

can we publish previews to npm instead?

solves:

1. does not require a token to view previews
2. doesnt require any yarnrc configuration to use them

tradeoffs:

1. gh action will require an npm token that can publish releases. We can resolve security risk by pushing them to a different org (@metamask-previews for example)
2. ??

[mcmire]

@BelfordZ This does seem like the easiest plan. @Gudahtt What say you to using a different NPM scope?

[Gudahtt]

As long as we can resolve to the new package name, that works. I'm not sure if that's possible with Yarn v3 for transitive dependencies.

e.g. if we have a new @metamask/eth-sig-util@5.0.1 release, how do we point all copies of @metamask/eth-sig-util@5.0.0 in our dependency tree at @metamask-previews/eth-sig-util@something?

Maybe Yarn resolutions can do this? Not sure.

[mcmire]

I think that Yarn resolutions can accomplish this as well, but we would definitely need to test this out somehow. I can try experimenting with this.

[xinnanyemm]

Hey team! Please add your planning poker estimate with Zenhub @cryptodev-2s @Gudahtt @mcmire @mikesposito