Cannot specify `*` for node peer dependency version ranges.

@* is a valid version range in NPM. It is useful in peerDependencies where it may not matter or may be difficult to specify a version range.

Current:

When package@* is given for a peer dependency, projen shows a prompt to resolve it to a specific version.

Feature Request:

package@* should be persisted in the peer dependencies in the package.json

Input:

peerDeps: ["package@*"]

Output

"peerDependencies": {
   "package": "*"
}

Example:

We have an issue in functionless where we need to specify * for a package that only has pre-release versions, but needs to match the version ranges of sibling packages.

Specifically,

• functionless relies on @aws-cdk/aws-appsync-alpha
• functionless would like to allow for a range of aws-cdk versions per functionless version (https://github.com/sam-goodwin/functionless/issues/107)
• @aws-cdk 2.0 chose to use pre-release versions (2.17.0-alpha.0) for all experimental packages (https://github.com/aws/aws-cdk/issues/15581#issuecomment-896938220)
• npm/semver do not support supplying a range of pre-release versions across major/minor/patch versions.
• npm 7+ fails by default when peer dependencies do not match (can be forced).

Thus, any version range given by functionless peer dependencies (2.17.0-alpha.0) are pinned to a single @aws-cdk major/minor/patch version (2.17.0).

Supplying @aws-cdk/aws-appsync-alpha@* would resolve this issue without consumers using npm 7+ needing to force all “invalid” peer dependencies.

[Chriscbr]

I think you’re right, auto-resolving “*” feels surprising especially when you’re declaring peer dependencies.

@thantos What if we support your use case like this?

project.deps.addDependency("package@*", DependencyType.PEER, { resolveVersion: false });

Currently this method already exists, just the “resolveVersion” part doesn’t do anything (yet).

[thantos]

We tried to use overrides https://projen.io/escape-hatches.html, but found that overrides cannot update fields that are managed by projen.

// does nothing
packageJson.addOverride("peerDependencies", { "somePeer": "*" } });

// works
packageJson.addOverride("hi", "there");