APM occasionally fails to install package dependencies

[Arcanemagus]

Prerequisites

I can't check this as I doubt anyone that has hit this has done so in safe mode.

• [ ] Put an X between the brackets on this line if you have done all of the following:
  • Reproduced the problem in Safe Mode: http://flight-manual.atom.io/hacking-atom/sections/debugging/#using-safe-mode
  • Followed all applicable steps in the debugging guide: http://flight-manual.atom.io/hacking-atom/sections/debugging/
  • Checked the FAQs on the message board for common solutions: https://discuss.atom.io/c/faq
  • Checked that your issue isn't already filed: https://github.com/issues?utf8=✓&q=is%3Aissue+user%3Aatom
  • Checked that there is not already an Atom package that provides the described functionality: https://atom.io/packages

Description

I've been getting reports from users about packages failing to activate, when the stack trace is looked at the issue is that a dependency of the package has failed to install. Generally re-installing the package works for the users that run into this, at least for the ones that report back.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Unknown, presumably installing a package and getting really unlucky 😛

Expected behavior:

All package dependencies are installed.

Actual behavior:

Rarely, a package dependency isn't installed, leading to the package to fail to run properly.

Reproduces how often:

Rather rarely, I have been unable to reproduce this myself. As a rough estimate the atom-linter NPM package has ~3.5k downloads a day, and I see a new issue related to this only every few days, so I would estimate 1 in ~10k installs run into an issue?

Versions

Many, mostly installs from the stable branch. This has been going on for a long time but there are reports from Atom v1.4.3 to the current Atom v1.15.0

Additional Information

Here is a partial list of issues where users have reported this:

• https://github.com/AtomLinter/atom-linter-pug/issues/11
• https://github.com/AtomLinter/linter-clang/issues/185
• https://github.com/AtomLinter/linter-eslint/issues/699
• https://github.com/AtomLinter/linter-eslint/issues/798
• https://github.com/AtomLinter/linter-eslint/issues/831
• https://github.com/AtomLinter/linter-pycodestyle/issues/110
• https://github.com/AtomLinter/linter-stylelint/issues/178
• https://github.com/AtomLinter/linter-tidy/issues/76
• https://github.com/AtomLinter/linter-tslint/issues/89

[Arcanemagus]

A few more:

• https://github.com/AtomLinter/linter-rubocop/issues/203
• https://github.com/AtomLinter/linter-flake8/issues/371

[ragekit]

tried to install omnisharp and its didnt install atomlinter. Maybe its a problem with atomlinter itself ?

[Arcanemagus]

@ragekit Assuming by "atomlinter" you mean Linter that would be a separate issue (and one we haven't seen before). This issue is about APM failing to install the NPM dependencies of these packages, it just happens that these are all part of the AtomLinter organization as I manage that 😉 so I see all the issues posted there.