Steps to reproduce:
- Start a Node project that uses at least five direct dependencies.
- Leave it alone for three months.
- Come back and try to install it.
Something in the dependency tree will yell at you that it is deprecated or discontinued. That thing will not be one of your direct dependencies.
NPM will tell you that you have at least one security vulnerability. At least one of the vulnerabilities will be impossible to trigger in your particular application. At least one of the vulnerabilities will not be able to be fixed by updating the versions of your dependencies.
(I am sure I exaggerate, but not by much!)
Why is it like this? How many hours per week does this running-to-stay-in-place cost the average Node project? How many hours per week of developer time is the minimum viable Node project actually supposed to have available?
You don’t need to do anything when you get a security advisory if you’re not impacted or the risk is acceptable. They’re just there to advise you.
The problem is that when you are alerted for trivial/non-actionable stuff it contributes to “alert-fatigue” and you just start ignoring all of the alerts.
As far as I’m aware, there’s also no way to triage an alert from an install other than to upgrade the offending package, which means you can’t really discriminate on the basis of “acceptable risk”