Ability to pin and use inprecise versions

[robinloeffel]

What I mean by this is that, for example, if I volta pin node@lts, I would expect it to reference the current LTS release channel instead of one particular version, which at the moment would be lts/fermium (14.15.4). Same thing with inprecise version numbers, such as volta pin yarn@1 or volta pin yarn@latest. In the package.json, we would then have something like:

  "volta": {
    "node": "lts",
    "yarn": "latest"
  }

This gives us the advantage of always being on the latest version in the user-specified range and the ability to automatically make use of bugfixes and such. If we were to, say, volta pin node@12, volta would check before every run if theres a new version available for said range (~12), if so, install and use it, if not, stay on the currently installed version.

This behavior is heavily inspired by nvm.

[charlespierce]

Hi @robinloeffel, thanks for the suggestion! To provide some context, there are a couple of reasons this isn't currently supported:

1. As you noted, it would mean that every run would need to re-check the version, which would mean every tool execution would have to wait for network calls to confirm the latest (or LTS) versions of the tools. That would add a lot of lag to commands that normally don't have it, which we want to avoid.
2. Related to the latency, Volta strives to be as transparent as possible, allowing users to run their normal commands and only have to think about the fact that they're even using Volta when they need to make changes. Adding in slowdowns and regular downloads of new versions (without any code changes) would break that by inserting Volta into more of your workflow.
3. One of Volta's goals is to allow for consistent, repeatable builds. A major benefit of having everyone on the same version of the toolchain is that it helps eliminate "works on my machine" situations caused by inconsistencies between developer machines (or between the developer and the CI environments). Fuzzy versions break that by allowing two people with the same configuration to have different versions running on their machine.
4. The current behavior has been in place since Volta's inception, so changing it would be a significant breaking change.

For those reasons, I don't think supporting imprecise versions makes sense as the default behavior of volta pin. However, I could definitely see cases where the fuzzy version support would be preferred by the project / team. Perhaps as an optional flag to volta pin to tell it to write the fuzzy version instead of the exact version? We'd definitely be open to an RFC that takes those design concerns into account.

[robinloeffel]

Hey @charlespierce, thanks for taking the time and considering this! Regarding your points:

1. I'd suggest checking for a new version only every 12 hours or so, if you're not explicitely pinning versions. Checking for a new yarn, npm or node version every time you execute one of them could very well have detrimental effects on performance, you are absolutely right!
2. Finding a middle-ground between checking for new releases and staying on a potentially outdated one would be key here. Displaying the download progress from time to time would be a reminder that you're using volta under the hood, yes, but it wouldn't be disruptive at all.
3. Fuzzy versions leave room for error, I agree. But I'd argue that this is a risk you're willing to trade off if you deliberately decide for inprecise versions.
4. 👍🏼

Changing the default behavior wasn't my original goal here, I should've made that more clear in my previous post! From the get-go I thought about introducing a flag but somehow didn't write that down at all, my bad!

[probablykasper]

In my case, I have a bunch of rarely-updated personal projects. I'd prefer for all of them to just use the same version, without me having to pin them all over and over every time I want to update. It would also be great because the CI could then always use the latest minor version.

Running volta pin --range node@18 could update package.json to this:

"volta": {
  "node": "^18.16.0"
}

Personally I wouldn't want Volta to automatically install more and more new versions though (at least not unless it auto-removes the old versions). I'd be happy with it only updating when I re-run volta pin --range node@18.