We have had a few use cases where users have requested to stay on nodejs
version 4 (LTS), while taking advantage of npm 3's new flat dependency
tree. Node 4 by default bundles witn npm 2. Node 5 defaults to npm 3.
In all of these use cases we are using online buildpacks. I would say this
use case isn't as common, but we definitely get requests for it.

On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 1:10 PM, John Shahid <jshahid(a)pivotal.io> wrote:

Hi all,

The buildpacks team would like to propose a change to the nodejs
buildpack. It was recently brought to our attention in this issue
<https://github.com/cloudfoundry/nodejs-buildpack/issues/54>, that the
nodejs buildpack will try to download npm if the version specified in
package.json didn’t match the version shipped with nodejs. According to
heroku
<https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/nodejs-support#specifying-an-npm-version>
this is a feature that exists for historical reasons that do not apply
anymore.

We would like to ask if anyone relies on this feature or have an
objection to this change.

Thanks,

The Buildpacks Team
​