"npm rebuild" should not run the "preinstall", "install" or "postinstall" scripts

[DeeDeeG]

Problem Statement

npm rebuild runs the preinstall, install and postinstall scripts as of npm v7.1.1. In my opinion, this makes npm rebuild less composable for scripting.

Particularly, this makes my favorite use-case (and intuitively I'd assume this is the main use-case) of npm rebuild an infinite loop.

(That use-case: In a package's postinstall script, right at the point in the lifecycle where the dependencies are all there and ready to rebuild... run npm rebuild with another version of Node. This rebuilds the native C++ code against that other version of Node. Unfortunately (in my view), this now calls postinstall which calls npm rebuild which calls postinstall... ♾️)

Potential Solution(s)

• Consider not running any other lifecycle scripts when invoking npm rebuild.
• Consider adding some sort of configuration option (I think a flag would be nice) to disable lifecycle scripts for npm rebuild. (I tried npm rebuild --ignore-scripts, but that skips the rebuilding too!)

More thoughts on this

I'd like npm rebuild to follow a more UNIX philosophy, a "do one thing and do it well" approach. In my opinion, the use-cases for npm rebuild are niche, and the context the command is run in are likely to be quite varied. Flexibility is desirable in order to cater to all those use-cases. And in my opinion, proactively running the preinstall, install and postinstall scripts is getting ahead of the user and to reiterate what I mentioned above, diminishes scripting composability.

Linking back to the original issue

npm/cli#2670

New (WIP) lifecycle documentation (for context)

npm/cli#2690

[MylesBorins]

@DeeDeeG it looks like you've got a good discussion going on in the npm/cli repo with the team who manage the CLI. There is not much more that we can do over here aside from direct you to work with that team.