ZlibError when calling publish

When we’re trying to publish our packages we are getting the error:

ZlibError: zlib: Cannot read property 'length' of null

Expected Behavior

It should publish the packages with no errors.

Current Behavior

It updates all the packages.json versions but DOES NOT publish them to the registry.

Possible Solution

Unknown?

Steps to Reproduce (for bugs)

Call npx lerna publish

Your Environment

Mac OS El Capitan 10.11.5 NPM version: 5.6.0 Node version: 9.2.1 Lerna version: 3.16.4

This is the full output of the log when we call npx lerna publish --loglevel verbose

lerna info execute Skipping releases
lerna verb git [ 'commit',
lerna verb git   '-F',
lerna verb git   '/private/var/folders/r_/t905430x1zvd1sgymm76t6p51b940m/T/bb79cbbe-dbe2-4a40-bbf6-8368b1b00437/lerna-commit.txt' ]
lerna verb git [ 'tag', '@fui/fui-button@1.3.0', '-m', '@fui/fui-button@1.3.0' ]
lerna verb git [ 'tag',
lerna verb git   '@fui/fui-buttons@1.3.0',
lerna verb git   '-m',
lerna verb git   '@fui/fui-buttons@1.3.0' ]
lerna verb git [ 'tag',
lerna verb git   '@fui/fui-checkbox@1.3.0',
lerna verb git   '-m',
lerna verb git   '@fui/fui-checkbox@1.3.0' ]
lerna verb git [ 'tag', '@fui/fui-form@1.3.0', '-m', '@fui/fui-form@1.3.0' ]
lerna verb git [ 'tag', '@fui/fui-forms@1.3.0', '-m', '@fui/fui-forms@1.3.0' ]
lerna verb git [ 'tag', '@fui/fui-radio@1.3.0', '-m', '@fui/fui-radio@1.3.0' ]
lerna verb git [ 'tag', '@fui/fui-select@1.3.0', '-m', '@fui/fui-select@1.3.0' ]
lerna verb git [ 'tag', '@fui/fui-switch@1.3.0', '-m', '@fui/fui-switch@1.3.0' ]
lerna verb git [ 'tag',
lerna verb git   '@fui/fui-text-field@1.3.0',
lerna verb git   '-m',
lerna verb git   '@fui/fui-text-field@1.3.0' ]
lerna verb git [ 'tag', '@fui/fui-core@4.4.0', '-m', '@fui/fui-core@4.4.0' ]
lerna verb git [ 'tag', '@fui/fui@4.4.0', '-m', '@fui/fui@4.4.0' ]
lerna info git Pushing tags...
lerna info publish Publishing packages to npm...
lerna notice Skipping all user and access validation due to third-party registry
lerna notice Make sure you're authenticated properly ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
lerna verb getCurrentSHA f6328967d0453c363a0d22d8d99f07f62da4ffad
lerna verb pack-directory packages/components/buttons/fui-button
lerna verb pack-directory packages/components/forms/fui-checkbox
lerna verb pack-directory packages/components/forms/fui-form
lerna verb pack-directory packages/components/forms/fui-radio
lerna verb pack-directory packages/components/forms/fui-select
lerna verb pack-directory packages/components/forms/fui-switch
lerna verb pack-directory packages/components/forms/fui-text-field
lerna verb pack-directory packages/fui-core
events.js:136
      throw er; // Unhandled 'error' event
      ^

ZlibError: zlib: Cannot read property 'length' of null
    at Gzip.Zlib.(anonymous function) (/Users/cameron.drysdale/Projects/fui/node_modules/minizlib/index.js:126:21)
    at Gzip.write (/Users/cameron.drysdale/Projects/fui/node_modules/minizlib/index.js:247:21)
    at Object.source.on.chunk (/Users/cameron.drysdale/Projects/fui/node_modules/tar/lib/pack.js:340:18)
    at Object.emit (events.js:159:13)
    at Object.emit (/Users/cameron.drysdale/Projects/fui/node_modules/minipass/index.js:308:25)
    at Object.write (/Users/cameron.drysdale/Projects/fui/node_modules/minipass/index.js:102:17)
    at Object.[onread] (/Users/cameron.drysdale/Projects/fui/node_modules/tar/lib/write-entry.js:263:10)
    at fs.read (/Users/cameron.drysdale/Projects/fui/node_modules/tar/lib/write-entry.js:220:19)
    at FSReqWrap.wrapper [as oncomplete] (fs.js:676:17)

[NMinhNguyen]

@phun-ky apologies for the late response. I had seen this issue before when searching for similar problems since upgrading from Lerna v2 to v3, and I actually managed to solve it but forgot to reply here. If you’re using Yarn, then add this as a Yarn resolution to your root package.json:

{
  "resolutions": {
    "npm-packlist": "1.1.12"
  }
}

The way I found this was we were using npm pack (similarly to https://reactjs.org/blog/2017/12/15/improving-the-repository-infrastructure.html#simulating-package-publishing) and it would never fail, however our publishes would fail very very frequently since upgrading to Lerna 3. It’s been a while so I don’t remember the full details now, but I think what happened was I looked at what npm pack did under the hood and it turned out it was using this npm-packlist dependency and an older version than what was introduced in Lerna v3. Since pinning down npm-packlist we haven’t had a single failure (and before we’d sometimes get 3-5 in a row). Hope this helps!

Another thing you can do is defer git push until after a succesful publish:

npx lerna version --no-push --yes
npx lerna publish from-git --yes
# See https://github.com/lerna/lerna/blob/ea6ec639560ce71d9df8cbd7eef2d416e71f5442/commands/version/lib/git-push.js#L11
git push --follow-tags --no-verify origin master

[carsonfarmer]

The above worked for us just now. Thank you @NMinhNguyen 🙏