Paragon CLI install-theme doesn't reset back to original @edx/brand after usage

[adamstankiewicz]

Improvements

The Paragon CLI tool's install-theme command works great to override the @edx/brand NPM alias during local development without risking modifying/committing code. Testing the command in the frontend-template-application MFE, it appears that after using paragon install-theme, the provided NPM package (e.g., @edx/brand-edx.org@latest) remains installed even when I revert back to using the default/standard npm start command instead of npm run start:with-theme.

Testing instructions

1. Install latest @edx/paragon into an MFE.
2. Add NPM script for start:with-theme, which runs paragon install-theme && npm start.
3. Execute npm run start:with-theme and provide @edx/brand-edx.org@latest as input.
4. Observe custom theme is applied in running application within browser.
5. Stop the dev server and start it again with npm start instead.
6. Observe the @edx/brand-edx.org@latest theme is still installed even though I would have expected the default Paragon theme to be applicable again.
7. As is, need to run npm install to reset back to original theme @edx/brand-openedx.

[adamstankiewicz]

Two possible approaches for the fix:

1. Automatically revert back to @edx/brand-openedx upon killing dev server.
2. Document (either in README and/or CLI tool itself) that npm install is necessary to reset to default @edx/brand-openedx.

[PKulkoRaccoonGang]

PR: #2768

[adamstankiewicz]

@PKulkoRaccoonGang I'm curious if you explored option 1 (i.e., "Automatically revert back to @edx/brand-openedx upon killing dev server.")?

[PKulkoRaccoonGang]

@adamstankiewicz Yes, I didn’t spend a lot of time researching this problem, but I tried running npm uninstall ${packageName} through child_process to remove the installed theme from node_modules, but it didn’t work.

[PKulkoRaccoonGang]

@viktorrusakov suggested an implementation using the following command:"start:with-theme": "paragon install-theme && npm start && npm install @edx/brand".