upgrading to 3.0 usability feedback

[dylang]

Hi @sindresorhus, I ran into a small problem upgrading trash tonight. I thought I'd provide you what was going through my head in case you start hearing about issues from others who aren't as interesting in giving all of the details, and if you are interested in making changes to simplify the transition.

What happened:

Hmm, I want to get rid of this pesky node_modules directory in my test fixtures.

❯ trash node_modules


┌──────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Update available: 3.0.0 (current: 2.0.0) │
│ Run npm install -g trash to update.      │
└──────────────────────────────────────────┘

Fun, let's upgrade!

 ❯ npm -g i trash
npm WARN deprecated [email protected]: Deprecated in favor of the `trash` module
npm WARN deprecated [email protected]: Deprecated in favor of the `trash` module
npm WARN deprecated [email protected]: Deprecated in favor of the `trash` module
[email protected] /Users/dgreene/.nvm/versions/node/v4.1.2/lib/node_modules/trash
├── [email protected] ([email protected], [email protected])
├── [email protected] ([email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected])
└── [email protected] ([email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected])
previous command took 5s.

Well that's strange, I'm installing the latest version of trash but it's in turn installing node modules that say they are deprecated, and they want me instead to install trash, which is what I thought I was doing.

Oh well, probably just a glitch in the matrix, these things happen.

❯ trash node_modules
zsh: command not found: trash

Hmm, what did I break?

After re-installing a few times, checking my version of Node, npm, trying npm-check -g, I run changelog on trash:

❯ changelog trash
3.0.0 / 2015-10-13
  * 3.0.0
  * minify images further
  * extract CLI into a separate module
    https://github.com/sindresorhus/trash-cli
  * tweaks
  * Close https://github.com/sindresorhus/trash/issues/35 PR: Use promises and ES2015ify tests.
  * fix logo

ooooh! new trash-cli. I think I saw that on twitter.

❯ npm i -g trash-cli
npm WARN deprecated [email protected]: Deprecated in favor of the `trash` module
npm WARN deprecated [email protected]: Deprecated in favor of the `trash` module
npm WARN deprecated [email protected]: Deprecated in favor of the `trash` module
/Users/dgreene/.nvm/versions/node/v4.1.2/bin/trash -> /Users/dgreene/.nvm/versions/node/v4.1.2/lib/node_modules/trash-cli/cli.js
[email protected] /Users/dgreene/.nvm/versions/node/v4.1.2/lib/node_modules/trash-cli
├── [email protected] ([email protected])
├── [email protected] ([email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected])
├── [email protected] ([email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected])
└── [email protected] ([email protected], [email protected], [email protected])
previous command took 7s.

Hmm, it's still telling me I should be using trash. But I just tried that and it didn't work.

 ❯ trash node_modules
 ❯ 

Unexpected success!

Is there a better way to handle upgrades to make it more clear to users what needs to be done?

I'm guessing most users don't know about changelog and might not take the time to look through the git history.

If you think this is an issue with update-notifier I can create a new feature request there instead.

[LinusU]

I ran into this as well, quite frustrating...

Maybe if update-notifier could get support for outputting the new name. But then again, I guess that this doesn't happen all that often...

[sindresorhus]

Sorry about that. I was working on moving those modules into the main trash module so I deprecated them. Unfortunately right before publishing a new trash version I got interrupted IRL...

As for the confusion with trash becoming trash-cli. I think it would be useful to somehow have the ability to add a message to update-notifier. See yeoman/update-notifier#56. Or maybe integrate the changelog module into update-notifier.

I'm guessing most users don't know about changelog and might not take the time to look through the git history.

I know they don't, but it should be expected, as a major means something is breaking. The fact that people blindly update (mostly for non-CLI modules) is a scary thought.