Validate Maintainers

Validate your npm package maintainers to limit your bus factor

This package validates a localMaintainers field which you can set to match the npm-set maintainers field. This makes it easier to limit your bus-factor for npm packages, by making sure that you have more than one person who can publish to an npm package.

Background

The set of people who maintain a repository on GitHub and who maintain an npm repository are not always the same. This package helps you figure out quickly if the maintainers for an npm package have been specified in the package.json in a new field, localMaintainers. The advantage of setting this field in the manifest is that:

• Maintenance rights become part of the commit history
• Npm doesn't currently publicize this information in their API
• It is easy to check who has or should have publishing rights

Using another field instead of authors (when people sometimes move on) and maintainers (who may not have push rights) makes npm publishing rights explicit.

Ideally, this package could be added to the suite of tools that help community organizers know who had access and control of their GitHub and npm packages.

Install

npm install --global validate-maintainers

For now, this is only a CLI tool.

Usage

Setting the field

In your package.json:

{
  ...
  "localMaintainers": "richardlitt <[email protected]>",
  ...
}

Or:

{
  ...
  "localMaintainers": [
    "richardlitt <[email protected]>",
    ...
  ],
  ...
}

Running the CLI tool

Below, you'll find the general help. However, you generally want to do two things:

• Validate the package.json by running: > validate-maintainers --local
• Match it with npm's published version: > validate-maintainers --match

Usage
  $ validate-maintainers <input>

Options
  --local, -l   Compare a local package.json to the one in the registry
  --commit, -c  Compare against a package.json from a particular (local)
              commit
  --github    Compare against a file on GitHub. Format: user/repo
              Can be used with --commit to point to a specific commit.
  --match     Match whatever version you are getting against the published
              npm version
  --ci        Only print and exit with 1 if error
  --one       Ignore the error if there is only one maintainer

Examples
  $ validate-maintainers validate-maintainers
  ✅ The \`package.json\` on npm has a valid localMaintainers field, with these maintainers:
  - richardlitt <[email protected]>

  $ validate-maintainers --commit cf5e43407cb0c682e99b01edeaaf6c43cbd27239
  ❌ There are no manually-specified npm maintainers for [email protected].

  # To check an npm version, use <pkg@version>
  $ validate-maintainers validate-maintainers@latest
  ✅ The \`package.json\` on npm has a valid localMaintainers field, with these maintainers:
      - richardlitt <[email protected]>
  Version: latest

  $ validate-maintainers --commit=HEAD~5
  ✅ The \`package.json\` at HEAD~5 has a valid localMaintainers field, with these maintainers:
  - richardlitt <[email protected]>

  $ validate-maintainers --github RichardLitt/validate-maintainers
  ✅ The \`package.json\` at RichardLitt/validate-maintainers on GitHub has a valid localMaintainers field, with these maintainers:
  - richardlitt <[email protected]>

  $ validate-maintainers --github orbitdb/benchmark-runner --match
  ✅ The \`package.json\` at orbitdb/benchmark-runner on GitHub has a valid localMaintainers field, with these maintainers:
      - hajamark <[email protected]>
  ❌ There is no \`localMaintainers\` field on npm for [email protected].

  Did someone publish it?

  ✅ \`maintainers\` on npm matches \`localMaintainers\` in the \`package.json\` at orbitdb/benchmark-runner on GitHub exactly.
  The current maintainer for [email protected] is:
      - hajamark

Testing it on CI

To test it on CI, add validate-maintainers to your dependencies and use the --ci flag in your Makefile:

npx validate-maintainers orbit-db --match --ci

This only throws an error and breaks the buiild if the commit doesn't match npm, in which case you should manually set new maintainers on NPM.

How to set new maintainers

Validate Maintainers will not set your maintainers for your repository. You need to do this manually. To add someone as a maintainer for an npm package, take a look at npm owner --help. As well, to set the local maintainers, add a localMaintainers field in your package.json and add anyone who should have publishing rights to your repository. This is different from the authors and maintainers field in your package.json, which doesn't perfectly line up with actual users who have publishing rights.

Contribute

Please do! Open an issue! Open a PR!

Please abide by the Code of Conduct.

License

MIT © 2019 Burnt Fen Creative LLC.