isaacs/npm — pull request #4010 by eleith (2013-10-18 07:01:39+00:00)
Title: force reinstall flag for npm

@KevinSheedy made an [excellent suggestion](https://github.com/isaacs/npm/pull/2388#issuecomment-21664472) on improving upon @rvagg's --skip-installed flag for npm.

this is my attempt at making that happen.

the goal of this patch is to make npm be smart about making network requests upon npm install XYZ commands. currently, it fetches XYZ everytime, even when the library already exists.

for continuous integration and provisioned development environments, this feature will come in handy. particularly the many many times i'm on a bus and i need to re-run some setup scripts...

this PR is meant to override https://github.com/isaacs/npm/pull/2388 which is a bit stale by now and proposes an odd syntax that @isaacs [pointed out](https://github.com/isaacs/npm/pull/2388#issuecomment-21657832).