update package README without publishing package

[mattdesl]

It is kind of annoying to burn a patch version number just to fix a typo in a readme. These changes do not alter code; they only improve readability/discoverability, and so it seems odd to have to bump a minor version for them. The alternative (force publish) is not much nicer.

It would be great to have a npm publish-readme or something. This just pushes the current package's readme to the npm site without a version bump.

[othiym23]

Forced republish isn't even an option anymore, so that's not a problem. ;)

We've had some discussions while working on the new npm site about how to support editing from the site itself; whatever mechanism we arrive at for that (if we decide to do that) would be useful here as well. Tapping @rockbot and @zeke into the discussion: how are you planning on dealing with this? Could it be something that gets added to npm-registry-client to update the doc (and just the doc) for the package on the registry?

[zeke]

As someone once said, versions are cheap. I don't think it make sense to add special behavior just for README fixes. I know the awkward feeling of post-publish README fixes, but it's really not such a big deal to bump the patchlevel (or minor depending on your style and the significance of the change) and publish again.

As for the editing-on-the-site idea: If we do build such a thing, I would prefer it to be something where you authorize npm as a contributor to your repository so the changes made on the site make it into version control instead of drifting apart.

[othiym23]

Sounds good to me! Closing as WONTFIX, more or less. @mattdesi, I get where you're coming from, but I also agree with @zeke – patch versions are just numbers, and numbers are cheap.