How to use executables from a package installed locally in node modules

Question

How do I use a local version of a module in node js  For example  in my app  I installed coffee-script   npm install coffee-script   This installs it in   node modules and the coffee command is in   node modules  bin coffee  Is there a way to run this command when I m in my project s main folder  I guess I m looking for something similar to bundle exec in bundler  Basically  I d like to specify a version of coffee-script that everyone involved with the project should use   I know I can add the -g flag to install it globally so coffee works fine anywhere  but what if I wanted to have different versions of coffee per project

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Same  regular  s accepted solution  but Fish shell flavour  if not contains  npm bin   PATH     set PATH  npm bin   PATH end

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I d love to know if this is an insecure bad idea  but after thinking about it a bit I don t see an issue here   Modifying Linus s insecure solution to add it to the end  using npm bin to find the directory  and making the script only call npm bin when a package json is present in a parent  for speed   this is what I came up with for zsh   find-up        path   pwd    while      path         amp  amp    -e   path  1      do     path   path       done   echo   path     precmd       if      find-up package json            then     new bin   npm bin      if     NODE MODULES PATH       new bin     then       export PATH   PATH   NODE MODULES PATH   new bin       export NODE MODULES PATH  new bin     fi   else     if     NODE MODULES PATH           then       export PATH   PATH   NODE MODULES PATH        export NODE MODULES PATH        fi   fi     For bash  instead of using the precmd hook  you can use the  PROMPT COMMAND variable  I haven t tested this but you get the idea      add-node-to-path       if      find-up package json            then     new bin   npm bin      if     NODE MODULES PATH       new bin     then       export PATH   PATH   NODE MODULES PATH   new bin       export NODE MODULES PATH  new bin     fi   else     if     NODE MODULES PATH           then       export PATH   PATH   NODE MODULES PATH        export NODE MODULES PATH        fi   fi       export PROMPT COMMAND    add-node-to-path

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Include coffee-script in package json with the specific version required in each project  typically like this    dependencies       coffee-script     gt   1 2 0    Then run npm install to install dependencies in each project  This will install the specified version of coffee-script which will be accessible locally to each project

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You don t have to manipulate  PATH anymore   From npm 5 2 0  npm ships with npx package which lets you run commands from a local node modules  bin or from a central cache   Simply run     npx  options   lt command gt   version   command-arg       By default  npx will check whether  lt command gt  exists in  PATH  or in the local project binaries  and execute that   Calling npx  lt command gt  when  lt command gt  isn t already in your  PATH will automatically install a package with that name from the NPM registry for you  and invoke it  When it s done  the installed package won   t be anywhere in your globals  so you won   t have to worry about pollution in the long-term  You can prevent this behaviour by providing --no-install option   For npm  lt  5 2 0  you can install npx package manually by running the following command     npm install -g npx

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UPDATE  As Seyeong Jeong points out in their answer below  since npm 5 2 0 you can use npx  command   which is more convenient   OLD ANSWER for versions before 5 2 0   The problem with putting    node modules  bin   into your PATH is that it only works when your current working directory is the root of your project directory structure  i e  the location of node modules   Independent of what your working directory is  you can get the path of locally installed binaries with  npm bin   To execute a locally installed coffee binary independent of where you are in the project directory hierarchy you can use this bash construct  PATH   npm bin   PATH coffee   I aliased this to npm-exec  alias npm-exec  PATH   npm bin   PATH    So  now I can  npm-exec coffee   to run the correct copy of coffee no matter of where I am    pwd  Users regular project1    npm-exec which coffee  Users regular project1 node modules  bin coffee    cd lib    npm-exec which coffee  Users regular project1 node modules  bin coffee    cd   project2   npm-exec which coffee  Users regular project2 node modules  bin coffee

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update  If you re on the recent npm  version  gt 5 2  You can use  npx  lt command gt   npx looks for command in  bin directory of your node modules old answer  For Windows Store the following in a file called npm-exec bat and add it to your  PATH   echo off set cmd  quot npm bin quot  FOR  F  quot tokens   quot    i IN     cmd     DO SET modules   i  quot  modules  quot      Usage Then you can use it like npm-exec  lt command gt   lt arg0 gt   lt arg1 gt      For example To execute wdio installed in local node modules directory  do  npm-exec wdio wdio conf js  i e  it will run    node modules  bin wdio wdio conf js

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Use the npm bin command to get the node modules  bin directory of your project      npm bin   lt binary-name gt   args    e g       npm bin  bower install

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Add this script to your  bashrc  Then you can call coffee or anyhting locally  This is handy for your laptop  but don t use it on your server   DEFAULT PATH  PATH   add local node modules to path      NODE MODULES    node modules  bin     if   -d  NODE MODULES    then     PATH  DEFAULT PATH  NODE MODULES    else     PATH  DEFAULT PATH    fi    cd        builtin cd         add local node modules to path     add local node modules to path    note  this script makes aliase of cd command  and after each call of cd it checks node modules  bin and add it to your  PATH   note2  you can change the third line to NODE MODULES   npm bin    But that would make cd command too slow

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Use npm-run   From the readme   npm-run  Find  amp  run local executables from node modules  Any executable available to an npm lifecycle script is available to npm-run   Usage    npm install mocha   mocha installed in   node modules   npm-run mocha test     uses locally installed mocha executable    Installation    npm install -g npm-run

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The PATH solution has the issue that if   npm bin  is placed in your  profile  bashrc etc it is evaluated once and is forever set to whichever directory the path was first evaluated in  If instead you modify the current path then every time you run the script your path will grow    To get around these issues  I create a function and used that  It doesn t modify your environment and is simple to use   function npm-exec        npm bin           This can then be used like this without making any changes to your environment   npm-exec r js  lt args gt

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For Windows use this      cmd into  node modules  folder      CD   bin grunt  --version

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I encountered the same problem and I don t particularly like using aliases  as regular s suggested   and if you don t like them too then here s another workaround that I use  you first have to create a tiny executable bash script  say setenv sh      bin sh    Add your local node modules bin to the path export PATH    npm bin   PATH     execute the rest of the command exec        and then you can then use any executables in your local  bin using this command     setenv sh  lt command gt    setenv sh 6to5-node server js   setenv sh grunt   If you re using scripts in package json then        scripts         start      setenv sh  lt command gt

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If you want to keep npm  then npx should do what you need     If switching to yarn  a npm replacement by facebook  is an option for you  then you can call    yarn yourCmd   scripts inside the package json will take precedence  if none is found it will look inside the   node modules  bin  folder   It also outputs what it ran     yarn tsc yarn tsc v0 27 5     home philipp rate-pipeline node modules  bin tsc    So you don t have to setup scripts for each command in your package json     If you had a script defined at  scripts inside your package json    tsc    tsc     each command defined in the scripts will be executed from    node modules  bin   first   yarn tsc would be equivalent to yarn run tsc or npm run tsc    yarn tsc  yarn tsc v0 27 5    tsc

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Use npm run -script   lt script name gt   After using npm to install the bin package to your local   node modules directory  modify package json to add  lt script name gt  like this     npm install --save learnyounode   edit packages json  gt  gt  gt  in packages json      scripts          test    echo   Error  no test specified    amp  amp  exit 1        learnyounode    learnyounode           npm run learnyounode   It would be nice if npm install had a --add-script option or something or if npm run would work without adding to the scripts block

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I prefer to not rely on shell aliases or another package   Adding a simple line to scripts section of your package json  you can run local npm commands like  npm run webpack  package json       scripts          test    echo   Error  no test specified    amp  amp  exit 1        webpack    webpack          devDependencies          webpack     4 1 1        webpack-cli     2 0 11

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In case you are using fish shell and do not want to add to  path for security reason  We can add the below function to run local node executables        run executables in node module  bin directory function n    set -l npmbin  npm bin       set -l argvCount  count  argv    switch  argvCount     case 0       echo please specify the local node executable as 1st argument     case 1         for one argument  we can eval directly        eval  npmbin  argv     case           set --local executable  argv 1          for 2 or more arguments we cannot append directly after the  npmbin  since the fish will apply each array element after the the start string   npmbin arg1  npmbin arg2             This is just how fish interoperate array         set --erase argv 1        eval  npmbin  executable  argv    end end   Now you can run thing like    n coffee  or more arguments like   n browser-sync --version  Note  if you are bash user  then  Bob9630 answers is the way to go by leveraging bash s     which is not available in fishshell

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I ve always used the same approach as  guneysus to solve this problem  which is creating a script in the package json file and use it running npm run script-name   However  in the recent months I ve been using npx and I love it   For example  I downloaded an Angular project and I didn t want to install the Angular CLI globally  So  with npx installed  instead of using the global angular cli command  if I had installed it  like this   ng serve   I can do this from the console   npx ng serve   Here s an article I wrote about NPX and that goes deeper into it

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zxc is like  bundle exec  for nodejs  It is similar to using PATH   npm bin   PATH     npm install -g zxc   npm install gulp   zxc which gulp  home nathan code project1 node modules  bin gulp

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If you want your PATH variable to correctly update based on your current working directory  add this to the end of your  bashrc-equivalent  or after anything that defines PATH      OLD PATH  PATH function updatePATHForNPM       export PATH   npm bin     OLD PATH    function node-mode       PROMPT COMMAND updatePATHForNPM    function node-mode-off       unset PROMPT COMMAND   PATH    OLD PATH      Uncomment to enable node-mode by default    node-mode   This may add a short delay every time the bash prompt gets rendered  depending on the size of your project  most likely   so it s disabled by default   You can enable and disable it within your terminal by running node-mode and node-mode-off  respectively

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You can also use direnv and change the  PATH variable only in your working folder     cat  envrc  gt  export PATH   npm bin   PATH

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I am a Windows user and this is what worked for me      First set some variable - i e  replace is with  xo  D  project root gt  set xo    node modules  bin       Next  work with it D  project root gt   xo  bower install   Good Luck

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Update  I no longer recommend this method  both for the mentioned security reasons and not the least the newer npm bin command  Original answer below   As you have found out  any locally installed binaries are in   node modules  bin  In order to always run binaries in this directory rather than globally available binaries  if present  I suggest you put   node modules  bin first in your path   export PATH    node modules  bin  PATH    If you put this in your    profile  coffee will always be   node modules  bin coffee if available  otherwise  usr local bin coffee  or whatever prefix you are installing node modules under

[node.js] How to use executables from a package installed locally in node_modules?

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