+1 on this. This is what I expected, but I missed it at the last PR. We need to update test/tap/outdated-json.js to fix the ci error.

https://github.com/npm/npm/blob/latest/test/tap/outdated-json.js#L83

As it stands, this breaks the --silent => --loglevel silent alias. Perhaps https://github.com/npm/npm/pull/16703/files#diff-3d20499d58f14c6f1edfe93d8ba8a8a2R115 should just check if loglevel === 'silent'?

@kenany Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the use of --silent? This change doesn't appear to break the --silent alias, it only changes the exit status code.

Before opening the PR, I checked to be sure that --silent didn't squelch output from npm outdated, because I was worried that this change would break such behavior.

It looks like npm outdated --silent does produce output. In fact, there is a test in outdated-json.js which checks exactly this. My change did have a test failure but it was just a place where I had missed updating the expected error code. I've since fixed this test.

Here is an example run of npm outdated --silent with my system installed NPM:

Sorry, I should've provided an example. Let's say I've configured my global .npmrc to have:

loglevel=http

Without this patch:

$ npm install object-assign
# get `loglevel=http` output

$ npm install --silent object-assign
# get `loglevel=silent` output

With this patch:

$ npm install object-assign
# get `loglevel=http` output

$ npm install --silent object-assign
# still get `loglevel=http` output, instead of `loglevel=silent` output

Thanks for those details but what you're describing is not the case, see the gif below.

This doesn't actually break that feature. It just changes the return code to match what was described in #14013. I mentioned my hesitation with the overlapping flag in my OP. Is that what you're describing?

Here I show a run with an .npmrc containing loglevel=http:

Checking the log level would work from a code perspective but since loglevel is an orthogonal feature, checking the config makes more sense. It makes what is happening, a configuration parameter specific to outdated has been passed, and enforces documentation requirements for the flag via testing.

My recommendation, from the OP, is that we change the config parameter's name. This avoids the confusion caused by using --silent as a config for both loglevel and outdated.

Okay, so oddly enough, this doesn't break the feature I mentioned for npm outdated specifically. I'm not sure yet why there's a difference, but my example above does demonstrate the issue I'm talking about (at least on my machine 😄).

@kenany You're right. I'm not sure why the same doesn't happen for outdated, but this does cause issues for other commands.

I haven't read enough of the code to tell why exactly. It makes sense that having something that is both a parameter and a shorthand causes a collision but why it functions properly for outdated is a mystery to me.

@wwalser This patch is breaking things because --silent is already an option, see the shorthands in lib/config/defaults.js.

@iarna Yes, that's discussed in the comments here, in the bug, and in the original change that introduced the bug. My proposed solution is to rename the flag or drop this fix and accept the knock on regressions. I'm happy with any decision. The bug this caused for me has been fixed down stream by ignoring the exit code.

Hi! We're moving repos to https://github.com/npm/cli/pulls! See our blog post about the migration to npm.community for details. As such, we're closing all active PRs on this repo.

Could you please re-open this PR against npm/cli instead? We're still interested in this patch so we hope you will! We'll continue discussion over there once it's moved. 💚