Working on npm packages within other npm packages

Update: the initial article was plaing wrong :) I fixed it now. The important change is that you need to npm link the dist folder, not the root folder of the plugin project.

So, the question arises when you want to change a module that is used (and tested) in another module. Let's say your normal flow is to change the version of the child package, then npm run packagr, then npm publish it, then npm install childModule@latest in the parent app. This quickly gets tiresome and leads to unrealistic version numbers.

A better solution is to use npm link. First, you go to your plugin/child module and you run npm run packagr. When it's done, go to the dist folder and run npm link. This will create a symlink in the global node_modules folder for your project's distribution package. Then, move to the parent module and run npm link <name-of-child>. The name of the child is the same as the name of the application. This creates a symlink in the parent module's node_modules to the global symlink created earlier.

Wait! A few gotchas, first:

• careful with the operations that might change the content of the folder linked in node_modules, as they will change the actual source code of the plugin
• after you finish with the work on the plugin, then delete the symlink, publish the child and reinstall @latest at the parent
• make sure that the version of the plugin package in the parent is permissive (something like >=initialVersion), otherwise you might have problems with the version number you set in the plugin package.json file

Hope this helps.

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npm gotcha: commit and do not delete package-lock.json

NPM is a popular package manager (think NuGet for JavaScript) and the information of the packages that it needs to install is stored in a file called package.json. You run npm install, packages are getting downloaded in a folder called node_modules and a package-lock.json file is generated. Since you can always delete node_modules and package-lock.json and rerun the package install, a common assumption is that they are redundant and they shouldn't be stored in source control. That is wrong in most cases.

The lock file not only stores the progress of the npm installation, but also the actual versions of the packages that it installs (for the entire dependency tree). As opposed to this, package.json contains only the packages directly needed by the project and the acceptable ranges of the versions. One can allow for any version of a package to be used, or maybe anything above a version, or an interval or something that is "the best version" around a specific version. Deleting the package-lock.json file effectively tells NPM that you trust package.json and the developers of each package for the versions of the dependencies loaded.

Here is a common scenario: you create a new application, you need some NPM packages so you npm install thePackage. This gets the latest version of thePackage and installs it, then marks the exact version into package-lock.json as well as the versions of the packages thePackage uses and what they use and so on. Finally, you commit the project, including package-lock.json. Three months later, a new developer comes and gets the project from source control. They use npm install and see that everything works perfectly, because the packages restored are the exact same versions as the ones restored for the original developer. But now they think "who committed package-lock.json? Don't they know it's redundant?" so they remove it from source control. Three months later another developer comes and runs npm install on the source from the code repository, only nothing works anymore. The versions that were downloaded are, depending on what is specified in package.json, the latest version of the dependency or maybe a version similar, but with a different minor version, and with the dependencies that the developers thought best for that particular version.

There is a situation when package-lock.json is entirely redundant and that is when package.json only specifies exact versions. NPM works so that you cannot replace the same version of a software in their repository, so the devs will never be able to change the package versions they used for a specific version. That is why it is safe to assume that the same version of a package will use the same package dependency tree (unless some of the packages are removed, but that's another question entirely).

Summary: If you have any version of a dependency in package.json specified as anything else than a specific version (no tilde, no caret, no asterisks, no intervals), then you also need to store package-lock.json in your source control.

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tpbclean.info is dead, but you don't need it

If you ever used The Pirate Bay, you know that a lot of the content there is porn. Even the most popular distribution users share movies or series among tons of porn links. In order to solve this problem, TPBClean.info appeared, as a simple pirate bay proxy that eliminated the porn links. Now that site is dead. I can't say that I am overly sad about it, since it worked very badly anyway. Yet, now, if you want to find movies shared by the likes of xxxlavalxxx or juggs99 (which probably started out as porn distributors anyway, with those nicks), you can't even see where they are in all that sea of xxx.

Well, there is a very simple solution, works in your browser, and all you need to do is install an extension that you probably ought to have had anyway. Now, this article assumes you use Chrome, but it probably works the same with Firefox. For Internet Explorer and Edge I have no idea and I also don't have the time to do the research, so if you feel inclined to help others and you know how to do it, please leave a comment and I will update the post.

This is the solution: install the CJS extension, which is a simple enough tool that allows you to run a script of your own design on any page. After you have installed it, browse to The Pirate Bay, click the extension button and add this script:

document.querySelectorAll('a[href="/browse/500"]')
.forEach(node=>{ 
    while(node && node.nodeName.toLowerCase()!='tr') { node=node.parentNode};
    if (node) node.style.display='none';
});

You might be tempted to try to load jQuery and rewrite the script, for better readability, but take into account that most ad blockers (which you probably use, if you use torrent sites) block jQuery on pirate bay domains.

What the script does is hide all the rows that have the Porn (id 500) category. If the site ever changes its ids, you might want to update the script, although that scenario is pretty unlikely.

Update: TPB Clean seems to be back online, but the article still applies.

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Personal archaeology

We are changing the furniture and repainting the walls in the apartment, so naturally, the first order of business is to dig into closets, drawers, bags, boxes and various regions under existing furniture and throw away as much as possible. It is a strange feeling, one that makes me remember a past and dead self, one that was hopeful, smart, crazy, in love, using technology and doing stuff that I can't even begin to comprehend nowadays.

I dug into old CD albums, remembering with much nostalgia the movies that I was watching and intending to keep forever. The movies are still around, CD players are almost gone. I had to use my wife's laptop to read the CDs, as mine would only accept a few of them. Well, that's because it's broken, but still. Among the CDs I found old source code and material that I had gathered from friends, jobs, the Internet, hacking. I felt like an archaeologist digging through the remains of old civilizations, ones we hold dear and towards which we feel a strong sense of ownership, but with which we have nothing in common.

Here it is: the Palm VX PDA that was built in 1998 and still works now, with the same battery, if you can just find a way to connect it to a computer so you can upload new stuff to it. Here it is: the Nokia E60 phone that worked flawlessly for more than ten years. I bought a smartphone to replace both of them just five years ago. But also, here it is: an external modem I had forgotten I had; I still wonder where I used it, if ever, and how I got hold of it. Same for the audio/video/infrared wireless transmitters and receivers that allowed me to watch movies from the computer to the TV in the other room. Tens of meters of Ethernet and all kinds of connective cables, forgotten in an age of ubiquitous digital wireless connection just forgotten in the odd corners of the house. Remains of two desktop computers (that I could still make work if I had the inclination) linger like the fossilized bones of extinct creatures.

I feel a mix of gratefulness, nostalgia, loss and that I am fucking old, all at the same time. I wonder where I could find people that still value these things that I dug out from my past and that otherwise will soon become anonymous and amorphous junk. Geez, look at the 6 CDs of utility software, stuff I still remember fondly and stuff I have never used: antivirus, archiving, communication, VoIP, OCR, document processing, all software that is in heavy use today but you would be hard pressed to find people still recognizing these particular incarnations. Music that I still have in my playlist on CDs almost twenty years old. Games that I had worked on that I have forgotten ever doing. Random writing from when I was so young I feel embarrassed just to remember.

And this is just from a 50 square meter apartment that we moved into just ten years ago. I can't even imagine how people do this when they move out from their childhood home, where they and their kids have lived for generations. What do they find? Do they even recognize it? What happened to all the people that I once was?

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HttpInterceptor in Angular (@angular/http vs @angular/common/http)

Just a short info about HttpInterceptor, which is the Angular system of intercepting http requests, so you can do useful stuff like logging, error handling, authentication, etc. There are two npm packets for http, the old one is @angular/http and the new one is in @angular/common. While their interfaces are similar, HttpInterceptor only works for @angular/common/http.

Bonus thing: in the interceptor you are building, when you get the Observable<HttpEvent<any>> from next.handle, do not .subscribe to it, lest you will double all http requests (including adding items).

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The hidden cost of civilization

Occasionally I ask myself if I really am an "ist". You know: misogynist, racist, classist, sexist, bigot, and so on. Or maybe I am "one of the good guys", a progressive feminist antiracist. And the answer is yes. I am both.

I've just read a really long feminist article that - besides naming white bigoted men "the enemy" and showing them the smallest bit of empathy just because "if you mess with them, they mess with us women when they get home" - had the author wonder how come so many of the people who got outed by the latest wave of misconduct allegations were people who declared themselves progressive and even wrote or shared content towards that. And the answer is really simple and really uncomfortable for all purists out there: we are all a bit bigoted. More than that, sometimes were are really leaning towards a side and then we change back, like reeds in the wind. I think that's OK. That's how people are and have been since forever. The answer is not to pretend we are different, but to accept we have that side and to listen to it and converse with it in order to reach some sort of consensus.

The animal brain has one job and one alone. It has to heavily filter all the inputs from the real world and then create a manageable model of it in order to predict what's going to happen next. Shortcuts and pure yes and no answers are heaven to it. If you can look at one person and immediately infer things that will help you predict their behavior from simple things like sex or color of skin or the way they dress, the brain is ecstatic. Try telling it that no, that's not good, and instead of the limited statistical experience model that it uses it should instead rely on the morally curated amalgamation of acceptable experience of other people frustrates it. It's not a human thing, it's not a mammal thing; if you could express this idea to an ant, it would get angry with you. The brain wants - if not even needs - to be racist, sexist and other isms like that. What it wants is to take everything and put as much of it in small boxes so that it can use the limited capacity it has to navigate the things that are not labeled in one way or another.

So yes, physiologically we are too stupid to not be bigots. All bigots are stupid. We are all bigots. In order to not be, or at least not behave like one, you have to be motivated. Messing one's entire life in a matter of days with an onslaught of sympathetic and coordinated allegations would do that quite well. That doesn't mean it's the right thing to do, any more than it would be to "kill off" people who disagree with you. Therefore in matters such as these I cannot help feeling sympathetic towards people who are quite literally dicks. It doesn't mean I agree with what they did, it means I don't agree with what anybody did. And in such moments of sympathy I hear the parts of me that current society wants erased shouting for attention: "See, we were right! We are dicks, but these moralists are überdicks!" I listen to bits of me that want everything wrong with the world to be the fault of poor people, women, people from other nationalities, races or religions, certain jobs or certain types, having certain cars or behaving or dressing in a certain way. It would be so easy to navigate a world like that: just kill off the Jews and black people, put women in their place, write code only in C#, rename the island of Java to DotNet, be happy!

Yet it is obvious it doesn't work that way. Not even white males wouldn't want this to happen, most of them. How do I make the voices shut up? Clearly witch hunting offenders until their lives are more upended than if they stole or ran someone over with their car does not work. And the answer, from my own limited experience, seems to be contact. Whenever I am inclined to say all Chinese or Indians are stupid (which is numerically much worse than being antisemitic and so many people from my background are guilty of it) and I meet a brilliant Asian programmer or entrepreneur or simply an articulated and intelligent human being I am forced to revisit my assertion. Whenever I think women can't code and I meet young girls smarter and more energetic than I am I have to drop that, too. Whenever I want to believe black people smell or are violent or are genetically faulty and I see some Nubian Adonis talking high philosophy way over my head, I just have to stop. If these people would all go hypersensitive, get offended by everything I say or do and gang up on me for being limited in my view, I clearly won't be motivated or even have the opportunity to grow out of it. Of course gay people and Jews are responsible for all evils on Earth if they are the ones making my life hell. And it is also easy to remain bigoted if I surround myself with people just like me. I've read somewhere a statistic that showed racists usually live in areas where they lack contact with people of color.

Basically, what I want to say is that I see no reason why someone would want to be paranoid. Either there is something wrong with them or people are really out to get them. And it is so easy to label someone "the enemy" and just pound on them, so easy to blame anyone else for your troubles, so easy to enter the flight or fight mode that is encoded in our very beings. I see this with my dog: he avoids big dogs since a big dog attacked him. If he continues this trend, he will certainly avoid getting attacked again by a big dog, while trying to get acquainted with them might result in injury or even death. It's so easy to decide to avoid them, however nice they smell and how nice they play. For him it is a very limiting, but rational choice.

Hide your inner bigot, cage him in the darkest depths of your soul, and it will grow stronger, malignant, uncontrolled. This is what civilization, especially the forced kind, does to people. It makes them think they are something else, while inside they are cancerous and vile, just waiting to explode in the worst way. Instead, I propose something else: take your bigot for a walk, talk to it, introduce it to people. Maybe people will start avoiding you like the plague, but that's their own bigotry at work. And soon, you will probably be the progressive one. It's hard to be a racist if you have a black friend and difficult to be a misogynist when you meet wonderful humans that happen to be female. You will make the bad joke, you will expose your limits and the world around you will challenge you on them. But in the end, your limits will expand, people who matter will understand and appreciate your growth, and frigid feminazi Jew lesbos can go to hell.

You know that joke, about the guy who wants to become progressive, so he is searching for a gay friend? Why not try it the other way around? Find a bigot near you and make friends.

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Mate in two, easy right?

In both these positions, White to move and mate in two moves. Can you spot them?

[SetUp "1"]
[FEN "2B5/K7/6p1/3QpNbb/4Pkp1/3P4/3PqP2/5RN1 w - - 0 1"]
1. Nd4 Qxf2 (1. .. Qf3 2. Ne6#) (1. .. Qe1 2. Ne6#) (1. .. Qe3 2. dxe3#)
(1. .. Bh6 2. Ne6#) (1. .. Qxe4 2. Qxe4#) (1. .. g3 2. Nh3#) 2. Ne2# *

[SetUp "1"]
[FEN "7b/3PKn2/1R2N1P1/1pr1k3/1N3p1Q/1pP1r2n/4pR2/BB6 w - - 0 1"]
1. Nd4 Nxf2 (1. .. Rcxc3 2. Ndc6#) (1. .. Rc8 2. Re6#) (1. .. f3 2. Re6#)
(1. .. Bf6+ 2. Qxf6#) (1. .. Nd8 2. Qxh8#) (1. .. Nfg5 2. Qxh8#) (1. ..
e1=Q 2. Re6#) (1. .. Rc6 2. Ndxc6#) 2. Re6# *


Here it is in video format:

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