Unable to install prepacked tarbal globally with volta

[stefanpenner]

During ember-cli's release process, we run an npm pack and then try to install the result of that locally. Volta intercepts this, and the command fails with:

ember-cli-3.11.0-beta.2.tgz
up to date in 0.035s
Volta error: Global package installs are not supported.

Use `volta install ./ember-cli-3.11.0-beta.2.tgz` to add a package to your toolchain (see `volta help install` for more info).

Unfortunately, following the instructions also fails:

 s/e/ember-cli ╍ {beta}+ volta install ./ember-cli-3.11.0-beta.2.tgz                                                                                                                                                                                                                   (14s 482ms)
error: Could not parse tool spec `./ember-cli-3.11.0-beta.2.tgz`

Please supply a spec in the format `<tool name>[@<version>]`.

[charlespierce]

Thanks for the report @stefanpenner We’ve got an issue tracking being able to install a tarball #427

If the goal is just to globally install and make sure the install process works (but not to run it), then you can use VOLTA_UNSAFE_GLOBAL=1 as an environment variable to disable the global intercept. Unfortunately, because of how the files are laid out in Volta, while this will allow npm i -g to run, the resulting binaries don’t end up on your PATH, so running the command afterwards doesn’t work.

[stefanpenner]

@charlespierce oops, i didn't see that one!