Lerna fails on identical package names

Expected Behaviour

Being able to manage multiple packages with same name but different tag.

Background

flow-typed is a central repository for Flow library definitions, a bit similar to Definitely-typed.

We maintain hundreds or thousands of library definitions (depending how you count them) that we should like to publish in NPM.

For this task we would like to use Lerna. The problem is that one version of library (libdef) might match multiple versions of flow, and each of them should be accessible separately form NPM. We’d like to have folders structure something like this:

  ├── alasql
  │   └── alasql_v0.3.x
  │       └── flow_v0.25.x-
  │           └── index.js
  │           └── package.json
  ...
  └── lodash
     ├── lodash_v4.x.x
     │   └── flow_v0.28.x-v0.37.x
     │       └── index.js
     │       └── package.json
     │   └── flow_v0.38.x-v0.46.x
     │       └── index.js
     │       └── package.json
     │   └── flow_v0.63.x-
     │       └── index.js
     │       └── package.json

where each index.js would be published to NPM separately. But e.g in case of lodash, it has one version (4.x.x), but multiple flow version ranges under each version. We want to define flow version ranges in PublishConfig as tags, but to have the same version 4.0.0 in this case.

Here is an example of DefinitelyTyped library definitions utilizing tags: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@types/uuid <- see versions tab.

Current Behaviour

Currently Lerna gives following error:

lerna ERR! ENAME Package name "@flow-typed/a11y-dialog" used in multiple packages:
lerna ERR! ENAME        /Users/path/to/code/experimental/definitions/a11y-dialog/a11y-dialog_v5.x.x/flow_v0.25.x-v0.67.1
lerna ERR! ENAME        /Users/path/to/code/experimental/definitions/a11y-dialog/a11y-dialog_v5.x.x/flow_v0.68.x-

Possible Solution

A) provide --ignore-version-check flag or similar. B) provide ignoreVersionCheck as an lerna.json option

More context in flow-typed repository: https://github.com/flow-typed/flow-typed/issues/3083

[polkovnikov-ph]

I’m not sure about creating another issue, so I’ll add 2 cents here. A run of npm version results in

lerna notice cli v4.0.0
lerna info versioning independent
lerna ERR! ENAME Package name "@scope/package-name" used in multiple packages:
lerna ERR! ENAME        C:\Users\user\Documents\proj\scope\packages\package-name
lerna ERR! ENAME        C:\Users\user\Documents\proj\scope\packages\package-name

Yes, with 2 identical package names. The package is depended upon by 2 other packages. I don’t think version check works well here.

[rdzidziguri]

Just in case, check your global package.json and make sure you do not have duplicates under workspaces.