npm-historian

npm-historian is a Node.js package (and CLI) for resolving npm dependencies to exact versions at a specific point in time.

Given a package name and version (range) string, npm-historian finds the exact version that was/would be/have been installed, were you to have run npm install on the specified date (+ time for increased specificity).

This exists because I was cavalier in my youth, heedless of "semantic" versioning and other best practices regarding versioning, and then, one day, impetuously deleted all my node_modules/ directories.

Installation

Install from npm:

npm install --global npm-historian

Examples

• Which babel were you on back in the middle of 2015?

  npm-historian --timestamp 2015-07-01 babel

  babel@* resolved to "5.6.14" at 2015-07-01

  Okay, but what's the latest compatible (pray to the semver gods) version now?

  npm-historian babel@^5.6.14

  babel@^5.6.14 resolved to "5.8.38" at 2018-02-09T23:49:03.983Z

• If no compatible version exists, npm-historian returns null:

  npm-historian --timestamp 2018-02-09 typescript@~3

  typescript@~3 resolved to "null" at 2018-02-09

• marked, on the day snyk.io reported its XSS vulnerability:

  npm-historian --timestamp 2016-05-16 marked

  marked@* resolved to "0.3.5" at 2016-05-16

• left-pad, that contentious package/module/function, on the day Azer Koçulu unpublished it:

  npm-historian --timestamp 2016-03-22 left-pad

  left-pad@* resolved to "0.0.4" at 2016-03-22

  (Which isn't quite right, but there was some weird rewriting of history going on that day in that package.)

  But suppose you had used npm install --save left-pad to install it:

  npm-historian --timestamp 2016-03-22 left-pad@^0.0.3

  left-pad@^0.0.3 resolved to "null" at 2016-03-22

  Tough luck :(

• You can also resolve an entire package.json and all its (dev|peer|bundled|optional)dependencies:

  npm-historian --timestamp 2016-09-08 package.json

  (the entire package.json, with all versions pinned down as of 2016-09-08)

License

Copyright 2018 Christopher Brown. MIT Licensed.