Install dependencies globally and locally using package json

Question

Using npm we can install the modules globally using -g option  How can we do this in the package json file   Suppose  these are my dependencies in package json file   dependencies          mongoose    1 4 0        node io     0 3 3        jquery      1 5 1        jsdom       0 2 0        cron        0 1 2       When i run npm install  I want only node io to be installed globally  the rest others should be installed locally  Is there an option for this

User · Answer

Build your own script to install global dependencies. It doesn't take much. package.json is quite expandable.

const {execSync} = require('child_process');

JSON.parse(fs.readFileSync('package.json'))
     .globalDependencies.foreach(
         globaldep => execSync('npm i -g ' + globaldep)
     );

Using the above, you can even make it inline, below!

Look at preinstall below:

{
  "name": "Project Name",
  "version": "0.1.0",
  "description": "Project Description",
  "main": "app.js",
  "scripts": {
    "preinstall": "node -e \"const {execSync} = require('child_process'); JSON.parse(fs.readFileSync('package.json')).globalDependencies.foreach(globaldep => execSync('npm i -g ' + globaldep));\"",
    "build": "your transpile/compile script",
    "start": "node app.js",
    "test": "./node_modules/.bin/mocha --reporter spec",
    "patch-release": "npm version patch && npm publish && git add . && git commit -m \"auto-commit\" && git push --follow-tags"
  },
  "dependencies": [
  },
  "globalDependencies": [
    "[email protected]",
    "ionic",
    "potato"
  ],
  "author": "author",
  "license": "MIT",
  "devDependencies": {
    "chai": "^4.2.0",
    "mocha": "^5.2.0"
  },
  "bin": {
    "app": "app.js"
  }
}

The authors of node may not admit package.json is a project file. But it is.

User · Answer

New Note  You probably don t want or need to do this   What you probably want to do is just put those types of command dependencies for build test etc  in the devDependencies section of your package json   Anytime you use something from scripts in package json your devDependencies commands  in node modules  bin  act as if they are in your path  For example  npm i --save-dev mocha   Install test runner locally npm i --save-dev babel   Install current babel locally  Then in package json     devDependencies has mocha and babel now   quot scripts quot        quot test quot    quot mocha quot      quot build quot    quot babel -d lib src quot      quot prepublish quot    quot babel -d lib src quot     Then at your command prompt you can run  npm run build   finds babel npm test   finds mocha  npm publish   will run babel first  But if you really want to install globally  you can add a preinstall in the scripts section of the package json   quot scripts quot        quot preinstall quot    quot npm i -g themodule quot     So actually my npm install executes npm install again    which is weird but seems to work  Note  you might have issues if you are using the most common setup for npm where  global Node package installs required sudo   One option is to change your npm configuration so this isn t necessary  npm config set prefix   npm  add  HOME npm bin to  PATH by appending export PATH  HOME npm bin  PATH to your    bashrc

User · Answer

All modules from package json are installed to   node modules   I couldn t find this explicitly stated but this is the package json reference for NPM

User · Answer

Due to the disadvantages described below  I would recommend following the accepted answer      Use npm install --save-dev  package name  then execute scripts with     npm run lint   npm run build   npm test    My original but not recommended answer follows     Instead of using a global install  you could add the package to your devDependencies  --save-dev  and then run the binary from anywhere inside your project      npm bin   lt executable name gt    lt arguments gt       In your case      npm bin   node io --help   This engineer provided an npm-exec alias as a shortcut   This engineer uses a shellscript called env sh  But I prefer to use   npm bin  directly  to avoid any extra file or setup   Although it makes each call a little larger  it should just work  preventing    potential dependency conflicts with global packages   nalply  the need for sudo the need to set up an npm prefix  although I recommend using one anyway    Disadvantages      npm bin  won t work on Windows  Tools deeper in your dev tree will not appear in the npm bin folder   Install npm-run or npm-which to find them     It seems a better solution is to place common tasks  such as building and minifying  in the  scripts  section of your package json  as Jason demonstrates above

User · Answer

You could use a separate file  like npm globals txt  instead of package json  This file would contain each module on a new line like this   mongoose 1 4 0 node io 0 3 3 jquery 1 5 1 jsdom 0 2 0 cron 0 1 2   Then in the command line run     lt  npm globals txt xargs npm install -g   Check that they installed properly with   npm list -g --depth 0     As for whether you should do this or not  I think it all depends on use case  For most projects  this isn t necessary  and having your project s package json encapsulate these tools and dependencies together is much preferred   But nowadays I find that I m always installing create-react-app and other CLI s globally when I jump on a new machine  It s nice to have an easy way to install a global tool and its dependencies when versioning doesn t matter much   And nowadays  I m using npx  an npm package runner  instead of installing packages globally

User · Answer

This is a bit old but I ran into the requirement so here is the solution I came up with   The Problem   Our development team maintains many  NET web application products we are migrating to AngularJS Bootstrap  VS2010 does not lend itself easily to custom build processes and my developers are routinely working on multiple releases of our products  Our VCS is Subversion  I know  I know  I m trying to move to Git but my pesky marketing staff is so demanding  and a single VS solution will include several separate projects  I needed my staff to have a common method for initializing their development environment without having to install the same Node packages  gulp  bower  etc   several times on the same machine   TL DR    Need  npm install  to install the global Node Bower development environment as well as all locally required packages for a  NET product  Global packages should be installed only if not already installed  Local links to global packages must be created automatically    The Solution   We already have a common development framework shared by all developers and all products so I created a NodeJS script to install the global packages when needed and create the local links  The script resides in       SharedFiles  relative to the product base folder                                                                                       Id  npm-setup js 12785 2016-01-29 16 34 49Z sthames                                                                                      Parameters   links  - Create links in local environment  optional        lt p gt NodeJS script to install common development environment packages in global   environment   lt c gt packages lt  c gt  object contains list of packages to install  lt  p gt        lt p gt Including  links  creates links in local environment to global packages  lt  p gt        lt p gt  lt b gt npm ls -g --json lt  b gt  command is run to provide the current list of    global packages for comparison to required packages  Packages are installed    only if not installed  If the package is installed but is not the required    package version  the existing package is removed and the required package is    installed  lt  p gt        lt p gt When provided as a  preinstall  script in a  package json  file  the  npm   install  command calls this to verify global dependencies are installed  lt  p gt                                                                                   var exec   require  child process   exec  var fs     require  fs    var path   require  path       ---------------------------------------------------------------      List of packages to install and  from  value to pass to  npm        install   Value must match the  from  field in  npm ls -json        so this script will recognize a package is already installed       ---------------------------------------------------------------   var packages           bower                                               bower 1 7 2       event-stream                                 event-stream 3 3 2      gulp                                                 gulp 3 9 0      gulp-angular-templatecache     gulp-angular-templatecache 1 8 0      gulp-clean                                     gulp-clean 0 3 1       gulp-concat                                   gulp-concat 2 6 0      gulp-debug                                     gulp-debug 2 1 2      gulp-filter                                   gulp-filter 3 0 1      gulp-grep-contents                     gulp-grep-contents 0 0 1      gulp-if                                           gulp-if 2 0 0       gulp-inject                                   gulp-inject 3 0 0       gulp-minify-css                           gulp-minify-css 1 2 3      gulp-minify-html                         gulp-minify-html 1 0 5      gulp-minify-inline                     gulp-minify-inline 0 1 1      gulp-ng-annotate                         gulp-ng-annotate 1 1 0      gulp-processhtml                         gulp-processhtml 1 1 0      gulp-rev                                         gulp-rev 6 0 1      gulp-rev-replace                         gulp-rev-replace 0 4 3      gulp-uglify                                   gulp-uglify 1 5 1      gulp-useref                                   gulp-useref 3 0 4      gulp-util                                       gulp-util 3 0 7      lazypipe                                         lazypipe 1 0 1      q                                                       q 1 4 1      through2                                         through2 2 0 0        ---------------------------------------------------------------        fork of 0 2 14 allows passing parameters to main-bower-files         ---------------------------------------------------------------      bower-main                     git https   github com Pyo25 bower-main git                                                                                           run          Executes  lt c gt cmd lt  c gt  in the shell and calls  lt c gt cb lt  c gt  on success  Error aborts       Note  Error code -4082 is EBUSY error which is sometimes thrown by npm for    reasons unknown  Possibly this is due to antivirus program scanning the file    but it sometimes happens in cases where an antivirus program does not explain    it  The error generally will not happen a second time so this method will call    itself to try the command again if the EBUSY error occurs        param  cmd  Command to execute     param  cb   Method to call on success  Text returned from stdout is input                                                                                   var run   function cmd  cb          ---------------------------------------------        Increase the maxBuffer to 10MB for commands         with a lot of output  This is not necessary         with spawn but it has other issues                 ---------------------------------------------     exec cmd    maxBuffer  1000 1024    function err  stdout            if        err                    cb stdout       else if  err code   0    -4082  run cmd  cb       else throw err                                                                                                   runCommand          Logs the command and calls  lt c gt run lt  c gt                                                                                    var runCommand   function cmd  cb        console log cmd     run cmd  cb                                                                                           Main line                                                                                  var doLinks     process argv 2         toLowerCase       links   var names      Object keys packages   var name  var installed  var links     ------------------------------------------      Get the list of installed packages for         version comparison and install packages       ------------------------------------------   console log  Configuring global Node environment      run  npm ls -g --json   function stdout        installed   JSON parse stdout  dependencies          doWhile             --------------------------------------------      Start of asynchronous package installation       loop  Do until all packages installed           --------------------------------------------   var doWhile   function         if  name   names shift        doWhile0         var doWhile0   function           ----------------------------------------------        Installed package specification comes from            from  field of installed packages  Required         specification comes from the packages list          ----------------------------------------------     var current     installed name         from    var required     packages name        ---------------------------------------        Install the package if not installed         ---------------------------------------     if   current      runCommand  npm install -g   required  doWhile1        ------------------------------------        If the installed version does not          match  uninstall and then install         ------------------------------------     else if  current    required            delete installed name       runCommand  npm remove -g   name  function                  runCommand  npm remove   name  doWhile0                        ------------------------------------        Skip package if already installed         ------------------------------------     else     doWhile1          var doWhile1   function           -------------------------------------------------------        Create link to global package from local environment         -------------------------------------------------------     if  doLinks  amp  amp   fs existsSync path join  node modules   name        runCommand  npm link   name  doWhile     else     doWhile           Now if I want to update a global tool for our developers  I update the  packages  object and check in the new script  My developers check it out and either run it with  node npm-setup js  or by  npm install  from any of the products under development to update the global environment  The whole thing takes 5 minutes   In addition  to configure the environment for the a new developer  they must first only install NodeJS and GIT for Windows  reboot their computer  check out the  Shared Files  folder and any products under development  and start working   The  package json  for the  NET product calls this script prior to install       name                        Books    description                 Node  npm  configuration for Books Database Web Application Tools    version                     2 1 1    private                    true   scripts          preinstall                node       SharedFiles npm-setup js links      postinstall               bower install        dependencies          Notes   Note the script reference requires forward slashes even in a Windows environment   npm ls  will give  npm ERR  extraneous   messages for all packages locally linked because they are not listed in the  package json   dependencies     Edit 1 29 16  The updated npm-setup js script above has been modified as follows    Package  version  in var packages is now the  package  value passed to npm install on the command line  This was changed to allow for installing packages from somewhere other than the registered repository  If the package is already installed but is not the one requested  the existing package is removed and the correct one installed  For reasons unknown  npm will periodically throw an EBUSY error  -4082  when performing an install or link  This error is trapped and the command re-executed  The error rarely happens a second time and seems to always clear up

[node.js] Install dependencies globally and locally using package.json

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