fix: check npm.config before accessing its members

[kaiyoma]

What / Why

Sometimes, npm.config can be missing entirely, but there are several
places where npm.config.foo is accessed blindly, resulting in these
kinds of errors and stack traces:

TypeError: Cannot read property 'get' of undefined at errorMessage (.../lib/utils/error-message.js:38:39) ... TypeError: Cannot read property 'loaded' of undefined at exit (.../lib/utils/error-handler.js:97:27) ... 

LBYL by checking npm.config first. Addresses a small part of #502.

References

• Partially addresses: [BUG] npm/npx is not handling directories with spaces (on Windows) correctly #502

[ljharb]

It seems like a bug that the config would ever be missing.

[isaacs]

I think we could dry this up by adding something like this near the top, no?

constconfig=npm.config||{loaded: false}

And then replacing npm.config with config in the lines below.

[kaiyoma]

Seems reasonable to me.

[kaiyoma]

Hmm, this approach seems to introduce more stack traces and more errors. Is this what we want?

$ ./bin/npx-cli.js foo Command failed: node.exe npm-cli.js config get cache --parseable Error: Exit prior to config file resolving. at errorHandler (...\lib\utils\error-handler.js:149:16) at ...\bin\npm-cli.js:150:20 at get (...\lib\config.js:171:3) at EventEmitter.config (...\lib\config.js:68:14) at Object.commandCache.(anonymous function) (...\lib\npm.js:156:13) at EventEmitter.<anonymous> (...\bin\npm-cli.js:131:30) at process._tickCallback (internal/process/next_tick.js:61:11) npm ERR! Exit prior to config file resolving. Error: npm.load() required at Object.get (...\lib\npm.js:59:13) at errorHandler (...\lib\utils\error-handler.js:207:14) at ...\bin\npm-cli.js:150:20 at get (...\lib\config.js:171:3) at EventEmitter.config (...\lib\config.js:68:14) at Object.commandCache.(anonymous function) (...\lib\npm.js:156:13) at EventEmitter.<anonymous> (...\bin\npm-cli.js:131:30) at process._tickCallback (internal/process/next_tick.js:61:11) npm ERR! npm.load() required ...\lib\npm.js:59 throw new Error('npm.load() required') ^ Error: npm.load() required at Object.get (...\lib\npm.js:59:13) at process.errorHandler (...\lib\utils\error-handler.js:207:14) at process.emit (events.js:198:13) at process._fatalException (internal/bootstrap/node.js:496:27) 

[kaiyoma]

It seems like a bug that the config would ever be missing.

Agreed, but I can't seem to figure out the root cause right now. There's something funky with directories with spaces (on Windows 10) not being quoted correctly, which causes a cascade of errors. This PR is simply for fixing the issues with accessing a missing config.

[isaacs]

It seems like a bug that the config would ever be missing.

Any error that is thrown during or before the npmconf.load() callback, but after the process.on('uncaughtException', errorHandler) in bin/npm-cli.js, would get us in this state.

It's a valid situation to defend against, and failing better is better than failing worse, but yes, I agree it's definitely an indication of another problem.