The Canary in the Goldmine

citgm is a simple tool for pulling down an arbitrary module from npm and testing it using a specific version of the node runtime.

The Node.js project uses citmg to smoketest our releases and controversial changes. The Jenkins job that utilizes citgm can be found on our CI.

Installation

npm install -g citgm

Usage

bin/citgm --help

(If citgm is installed globally, you can also man citgm)

Usage: citgm [options] <module> [script]

Options:

  -h, --help                  output usage information
  -V, --version               output the version number
  -v, --verbose [level]       Verbose output (silly, verbose, info, warn, error)
  -q, --npm-loglevel [level]  Verbose output (silent, error, warn, http, info, verbose, silly)
  -l, --lookup <path>         Use the lookup table provided at <path>
  -d, --nodedir <path>        Path to the node source to use when compiling native addons
  -n, --no-color              Turns off colorized output
  -s, --su                    Allow running the tool as root.
  -m, --markdown              Output results in markdown
  -t, --tap [path]            Output results in tap with optional file path
  -o, --timeout <length>      Set timeout for npm install
  -u, --uid <uid>             Set the uid (posix only)
  -g, --gid <uid>             Set the gid (posix only)

The tool requires online access to the npm registry to run. If you want to point to a private npm registry, then you'll need to set that up in your npm config separately before running citgm.

By default, the tool will prevent users from running as root unless the -s or --su CLI switch is set. If the tool is launched as root, it will attempt to silently and automatically downgrade permissions. If it cannot downgrade, it will print an error and exit the process.

The tool will also automatically check npm to see if there are updates available. If a newer version has been published to npm, an info notice will appear in the verbose output. If the -v or --verbose flag is not set, the update notice will not be displayed.

citgm-all

If you want to run all the test suites for all modules found in a lookup table use citgm-all. It will automate the running of all tests and give itemized results at the end. It has all the same options as citgm except for the added markdown option which will print the results in markdown.

Usage: citgm-all [options]

Options:

  -h, --help                  output usage information
  -V, --version               output the version number
  -v, --verbose [level]       Verbose output (silly, verbose, info, warn, error)
  -q, --npm-loglevel [level]  Verbose output (silent, error, warn, http, info, verbose, silly)
  -l, --lookup <path>         Use the lookup table provided at <path>
  -d, --nodedir <path>        Path to the node source to use when compiling native addons
  -n, --no-color              Turns off colorized output
  -s, --su                    Allow running the tool as root.
  -m, --markdown              Output results in markdown
  -t, --tap [path]            Output results in tap with optional file path
  -o, --timeout <length>      Set timeout for npm install
  -u, --uid <uid>             Set the uid (posix only)
  -g, --gid <uid>             Set the gid (posix only)

You can also test your own list of modules:

citgm-all -l ./path/to/my_lookup.json

For syntax, see lookup.json, the available attributes are:

"replace": true              Download module from github repo in package.json
"master": true               Use the master branch
"prefix": "v"                Specify the prefix used in the module version.
"flaky": true                Ignore failures
"skip": true                 Completely skip the module
"repo": "https://github.com/pugjs/jade" - Use a different github repo
"skipAnsi": true             Strip ansi data from output stream of npm
"script": /path/to/script | https://url/to/script - Use a custom test script
"sha": "<git-commit-sha>"    Test against a specific commit

Testing

You can run the test suite using npm

npm run test

This will run both a linter and a tap based unit test suite.

Notes

You can identify the module to be tested using the same syntax supported by the npm install CLI command

citgm activitystrea.ms@latest
citgm git+http://github.com/jasnell/activitystrea.ms

Quite a few modules published to npm do not have their tests included, so we end up having to go directly to github. The most reliable approach is pulling down a tar ball for a specific branch from github:

citgm https://github.com/caolan/async/archive/master.tar.gz

To simplify working with modules that we know need special handling, a lookup table mechanism is provided. This mechanism allows citgm to substitute certain known npm specs (lodash for instance) with their github tarball alternatives and custom scripts. The lookup mechanism is switched on using the -l or --lookup command line option.

citgm lodash@latest

There is a built in lookup.json in the lib directory that will be used by default. If you want to use an alternative lookup.json file, pass in the path:

citgm --lookup ../path/to/lookup.json lodash@latest

For the most part, the built in table should be sufficient for general use.

Additional Notes:

• You may experience some wonkiness on Windows as the tool has not been fully tested on that platform.

• The tool uses the npm and node in the PATH. To change which node and npm the tool uses, change the PATH before launching citgm

• Running the tool in verbose mode (CLI switch -v silly) outputs significantly more detail (which is likely what we'll want in a fully automated run)

• If you've taken a look at the dependencies for this tool, you'll note that there are quite a few, some of which may not be strictly required. The reason for the large number of dependencies is that this is a testing tool, and many of the dependencies are broadly used. A large part of the reason for using them is to test that they'll work properly using the version of node being tested.

• PRs are welcome!

Contributors

• James M Snell (@jasnell, [email protected] / [email protected] )
• Myles Borins (@thealphanerd, [email protected] / [email protected] )