npm_config_loglevel env variable is silencing too much (--silent)

[kuceb]

Bug

introduced by #817

Current:
npm_config_loglevel is able to silent the stdout from cypress version, cypress cache list, cypress downloading message, etc

Desired:
presence of npm_config_loglevel should not silence important messages such as the downloading message, and output from cypress version and cypress cache list, etc

[isolationism]

I respectfully disagree.

Disrespect for this key property means a flood of literally millions of lines of useless logfile output in a container deploy scenario:

[20:22:06]  Unzipping Cypress        99% 1s [title changed]
[20:22:06]  Unzipping Cypress        99% 1s [title changed]
[20:22:06]  Unzipping Cypress        99% 1s [title changed]
[20:22:06]  Unzipping Cypress        99% 1s [title changed]
... forever ...

I would paste the entire buffer, but I don't think the megabytes of data are valuable — do you?

In fact, you might rightfully surmise that it goes a long way toward obscuring actually useful log information by spamming log files with worthless garbage data, obliterating terminal scrollback buffers, and so on.

If you want to WARN people about a large/potentially long download, fine — you get one line. The current implementation is a massive waste of resources with no benefit whatsoever. Don't ram it down users' throats.

To wit: Nobody is silencing output because they are waiting on baited breath for how long the process is going to take.

[kuceb]

@isolationism I understand your frustration, the idea here is to print the 6 lines of output when the log level is set to silent. We already try to do this in CI and when no tty, but clearly there are bugs there. and I'm not sure why we haven't fixed the 1000's of lines of output when we detect a tty, I believe there is a PR for it

[bahmutov]

I am fine with download progress messages, but I think we are silencing important stuff that user is asking for:

• cypress --version
• cypress version
• cypress cache path
• cypress cache list

[cypress-bot]

The code for this is done in cypress-io/cypress#6909, but has yet to be released.
We'll update this issue and reference the changelog when it's released.

[cypress-bot]

Released in 4.4.0.

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Cypress v4.4.0, please open a new issue.