how to specify local modules as npm package dependencies

Question

I have an application which has the usual set of dependencies on third party modules  e g   express   specified in the package json file under dependencies  E g    express         3 1 1    I would like to structure my own code modularly and have a set of local  meaning on the file system i am currently in  modules be installed by the package json  I know that i can install a local module by running   npm install path to mymodule   However  I don t know how to make this happen via the package json dependencies structure  Using the --save option in this command is simply putting  mymodule    0 0 0  into my package json  doesn t reference the filepath location   If i then remove the installed version from node modules  and try to re-install from the package json  it fails  because it looks for  mymodule  in the central registry  and doesn t look locally    I m sure the is a way of telling the  dependencies      structure that I want it to be installed from a file system path  but don t know how   Anyone else had this problem  Thanks

User · Answer

I couldn t find a neat way in the end so I went for create a directory called local modules and then added this bashscript to the package json in scripts- preinstall     bin sh for i in   find   local modules -type d -maxdepth 1    do     packageJson    i  package json      if   -f    packageJson      then         echo  installing   i              npm install    i       fi done

User · Answer

At work we have a common library that is used by a few different projects all in a single repository  Originally we used the published  private  version  npm install --save rp-utils  but that lead to a lot of needless version updates as we developed   The library lives in a sister directory to the applications and we are able to use a relative path instead of a version   Instead of  quot rp-utils quot    quot  1 3 34 quot  in package json it now is        quot dependencies quot              quot rp-utils quot    quot    rp-utils quot           the rp-utils directory contains a publishable npm package

User · Answer

See  Local dependency in package json  It looks like the answer is npm link  https   docs npmjs com cli link

User · Answer

If it s acceptible to simply publish your modules preinstalled in node modules alongside your other files  you can do it like this        node modules foo package json       name   foo      version   0 0 1      main   index js          package json      dependencies        foo   0 0 1      bar              app js var foo   require  foo      You may also want to store your module on git and tell your parent package json to install the dependency from git  https   npmjs org doc json html Git-URLs-as-Dependencies

User · Answer

npm install now supports this  npm install --save    path to mymodule   For this to work mymodule must be configured as a module with its own package json  See Creating NodeJS modules   As of npm 2 0  local dependencies are supported natively  See danilopopeye s answer to a similar question  I ve copied his response here as this question ranks very high in web search results      This feature was implemented in the version 2 0 0 of npm  For example        name    baz      dependencies          bar    file    foo bar              Any of the following paths are also valid      foo bar   foo bar   foo bar  foo bar    syncing updates  Since npm install copies mymodule into node modules  changes in mymodule s source will not automatically be seen by the dependent project   There are two ways to update the dependent project with    Update the version of mymodule and then use npm update  As you can see above  the package json  dependencies  entry does not include a version specifier as you would see for normal dependencies  Instead  for local dependencies  npm update just tries to make sure the latest version is installed  as determined by mymodule s package json  See chriskelly s answer to this specific problem  Reinstall using npm install  This will install whatever is at mymodule s source path  even if it is older  or has an alternate branch checked out  whatever

User · Answer

After struggling much with the npm link command  suggested solution for developing local modules without publishing them to a registry or maintaining a separate copy in the node modules folder   I built a small npm module to help with this issue    The fix requires two easy steps    First   npm install lib-manager --save-dev   Second  add this to your package json          name    yourModuleName                 scripts          postinstall      node modules  bin local-link          More details at https   www npmjs com package lib-manager  Hope it helps someone

[node.js] how to specify local modules as npm package dependencies

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