Highlight action items in ERESOLVE error msg?

[ruyadorno]

We still get lots of reports from folks using the cli and getting frustrated when hitting an ERESOLVE error, missing the possible action items described in the error message.

Example of an ERESOLVE error message:

npm ERR! code ERESOLVE
npm ERR! ERESOLVE unable to resolve dependency tree
npm ERR!
npm ERR! Found: [email protected]
npm ERR! node_modules/abbrev
npm ERR!   peer abbrev@"~1.0.0" from the root project
npm ERR!
npm ERR! Could not resolve dependency:
npm ERR! peer abbrev@"=1.1.1" from a@undefined
npm ERR! a
npm ERR!
npm ERR! Fix the upstream dependency conflict, or retry
npm ERR! this command with --force, or --legacy-peer-deps
npm ERR! to accept an incorrect (and potentially broken) dependency resolution.
npm ERR!
npm ERR! See /<path>/.npm/eresolve-report.txt for a full report.

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!     /<path>/.npm/_logs/2021-03-03T03_10_06_004Z-debug.log

While the message is very accurate, maybe it can use some different UI elements to help highlight the possible solutions:

• npm install --force
• npm install --legacy-peer-deps

This is a difficult balance act to get right since we don't want all users to ignore the error message and run in these modes but rather unblock users that are not in capacity of fixing their install tree.

[wesleytodd]

I think the example from the twitter thread leading to this, I think that the issue here was that it was miss-identified despite it being in the output. When I ran it, I noticed that the dep lines which conflicted were bold, so I wonder if just instead making the action items bold would solve the confusion?

[ruyadorno]

From the 17th March OpenRFC call:

• let's make a block with more explicit looking npm commands along with the flags so that users can copy and paste
• one possible improvement is to make these suggestions an interactive prompt so that users can be unblocked when hitting it (maybe same for the "did you mean" feature)