Need to be able change version of Alloy that is used with Appc CLI

[brentonhouse]

As a developer,
I want to be able to be able to use a different version (or custom build) of Alloy when using the Appcelerator CLI,
So that I can be able to patch urgent issues and critical defects while waiting for a new version of Alloy

With the old build system (Titanium or Ti), I could simply run npm install -g alloy@versionx to get a different or custom build of Alloy used with a build. Now with the new build system (Appcelerator or Appc), A specific version of Alloy is bundled with the Appcelerator Platform and there is not a simple way to change it on all our developer and build machines.
If there is known way of doing this already, please let us know!

We have an Enterprise license and this is critical for us right now as we have a memory leak that we need to patch in Alloy and get it into production quickly.

Associated JIRA Ticket: https://jira.appcelerator.org/browse/AC-661

Workaround

@FokkeZB proposed adding a global hook that contains this:

delete process.env.ALLOY_PATH;

https://jira.appcelerator.org/browse/TIMOB-20512

[FokkeZB]

@brentonhouse if you'd like to contain this within the adamantium project you could install a global CLI hook as part of installing the global Alloy CLI. See how TiShadow does the same:

https://github.com/dbankier/TiShadow/blob/master/package.json#L47

[brentonhouse]

@FokkeZB Maybe even create a parameter that could enable/disable it so that you could compile using "real" alloy if you wanted to.

[FokkeZB]

That's probably not going to happen anymore as Alloy is being refactored.

[brentonhouse]

Couldn't I look for a parameter in cli:go hook and then conditionally execute delete process.env.ALLOY_PATH; depending on what the parameter value was? Are these being refactored as well?

[FokkeZB]

All of CLI tooling is getting refactored, but of course until then you can introduce a option (like TiShadow does --express) to trigger the global CLI to be used.

[brentonhouse]

ah, gotcha. I will try to keep up w/ the changes to adapt.