left-pad
A notorious 2016 npm package incident in which an 11-line package was depended upon by a large number of projects. When its author unpublished it, a cascading failure disrupted parts of the internet, making it a canonical example of excessive dependency in open-source ecosystems.
Core Facts
Timeline (last 90 days)
The left-pad incident prompted the community and standards committees to accelerate the incorporation of commonly used utility functions into the language core, reducing reliance on external packages.
The left-pad incident occurred in March 2016.
The left-pad incident was triggered when Kik demanded that npm forcibly transfer the package name "kik," and author Azer Koçulu, in protest, unpublished all approximately 273 of his packages from npm.
Because left-pad was indirectly referenced by toolchains such as React and Babel, its removal caused the entire front-end build ecosystem to temporarily grind to a halt.
Within hours of the left-pad incident, countless CI/CD pipelines worldwide experienced build failures, and npm subsequently made an exceptional decision to restore the package.
padStart can directly replace the core functionality of left-pad, while padEnd handles right-side padding.
left-pad is a string left-padding utility with only a dozen or so lines of code.
During the left-pad incident experienced by the Node.js community in 2016, a package with only 11 lines of code was unpublished from npm by its author, causing thousands of projects to fail to build.
2016年npm上left-pad包被删除导致全球数千项目构建失败
In the left-pad incident of 2016, developer Azer Koçulu deleted over 270 npm packages due to a dispute over an npm package name, and the 11-line left-pad package caused build failures for a large number of Node.js projects worldwide.
2 more timeline events
All Facts (13)
In the left-pad incident of 2016, an npm package of only 11 lines of code was withdrawn by its author, causing the build pipelines of mainstream projects such as React and Babel to be disrupted for several hours
80%UnverifiedThe left-pad incident prompted the community and standards committees to accelerate the incorporation of commonly used utility functions into the language core, reducing reliance on external packages.
50%Unverifiedleft-pad is a string left-padding utility with only a dozen or so lines of code.
50%UnverifiedThe left-pad incident occurred in March 2016.
50%UnverifiedBecause left-pad was indirectly referenced by toolchains such as React and Babel, its removal caused the entire front-end build ecosystem to temporarily grind to a halt.
50%UnverifiedpadStart can directly replace the core functionality of left-pad, while padEnd handles right-side padding.
50%Unverified2016年npm上left-pad包被删除导致全球数千项目构建失败
50%UnverifiedWithin hours of the left-pad incident, countless CI/CD pipelines worldwide experienced build failures, and npm subsequently made an exceptional decision to restore the package.
50%UnverifiedThe left-pad incident was triggered when Kik demanded that npm forcibly transfer the package name "kik," and author Azer Koçulu, in protest, unpublished all approximately 273 of his packages from npm.
50%UnverifiedIn the left-pad incident of 2016, developer Azer Koçulu deleted over 270 npm packages due to a dispute over an npm package name, and the 11-line left-pad package caused build failures for a large number of Node.js projects worldwide.
60%UnverifiedIn the 2016 left-pad incident, an npm package of only 11 lines of code was unpublished by its author, causing the builds of mainstream projects such as React and Babel to break for several hours, and directly driving npm's registry immutability policy.
60%UnverifiedIn the left-pad incident of 2021, a single deleted npm package caused thousands of projects to fail to build
60%UnverifiedDuring the left-pad incident experienced by the Node.js community in 2016, a package with only 11 lines of code was unpublished from npm by its author, causing thousands of projects to fail to build.
50%