Did you check if HEAD of master works? --cafile was recently added - it's the most recent commit in fact - and is inherited implicitly through the environment. See commit 8c4b0ff for details.

I intend to double-check tomorrow. The use-case was npm install ${somePackageRequiringARebuild}, with ca configured via npm config set cafile="/path/to/cert.pem", and invasive debugging of gyp.opts (e.g. console.log) showed that if (caFile)... was a false condition.

If this is the case, and the intention is that it should be inherited implicitly or explicitly into gyp.opts, then my 'fix' is in the wrong place. I will look into how gyp.opts is populated.

Here is the code that is responsible for populating the gyp.opts object with npm_config_* environment variables.

@mschnee @bnoordhuis guys, any progress here? Is there any chance to bypass the issue without the PR?

Closing, --cafile has been out for some time now and seems to be working okay. Please holler if you have reason to believe otherwise.