It might happen that an npm package you want to use has some bugs. Should you just wait for maintainers to fix them? Sure not 😉. You can eliminate the bug and host package by yourself. Then create a pull request and possibly become an open-source contributor 💪.
Bugs happens 🐛
Recently I used a react-ga npm package to connect React based Single Page App to Google Analytics services.
To start I followed an usual procedure, including react-ga in package.json file. npm install went well, then on npm start:
Failed to compile.
/Users/arturkozubek/projects/orbicobeauty-web/node_modules/react-ga/types/index.d.ts
(87,20): A rest parameter must be of an array type.
🙀 This is unusual… Clearly there is a TypeScript related bug in this package… Having a look on the mentioned index.d.ts file, line 87:
export function ga(...args: any): void;
Well, I guess I just follow the message of TypeScript compiler and make it:
export function ga(...args: any[]): void;
So I saved the changes locally and tested. It worked! But you can’t just rely on modifying a node module source files… You probably ignore node_modules files in your repo, which is a good common practice. Any time you (or your colleague) reinstall the package it will be downloaded again from original source.
Fork and fix 🍴
Usually (if not always, not sure) package source code is served on github. What’s more, you can point a github repository in package.json to download a package from there. Can you see where it goes 😉?
- I forked the package,
- cloned to my machine so I can edit the source code
git clone https://github.com/archiewald/react-ga.git, - created a fix branch, committed the fix,
- pushed it to my forked repo.
In package.json, instead of version number, I pointed to the repo I just forked and created, with fix commit hash to make it explicit what code I refer to:
{
...
"react-ga": "git+https://github.com/archiewald/react-ga.git#e9d592e940260017f23815bcee9703a2a4866705",
...
}
After re-npm install I could enjoy implementing this great package!
Contribute 💪
Don’t be afraid to share your fix with the community! Raise an issue and create a pull request with your changes. Once you implemented them in your forked repo, it is easy!
