Guys I know that using npm install -g we can install the node modules/packages globally, but I am not sure about the options --save and --save-dev
I have Googled it but still not clear about it. Please share your thoughts.
--save adds the third-party package to the package's dependencies. It will be installed together with the package whenever someone runs npm install yourPackage.
--save-dev adds the third-party package to the package's development dependencies. It won't be installed when someone installs your package. It's typically only installed if someone clones your source repository and runs npm install in it.
Dev dependencies, as the same suggests, are those dependencies that are only needed for developing the package. That can include test runners, compilers, packagers, etc.
Both types of dependencies are stored in the package's package.json file. --save adds to dependencies, --save-dev adds to devDependencies. From the documentation:
devDependencies
If someone is planning on downloading and using your module in their program, then they probably don't want or need to download and build the external test or documentation framework that you use.
In this case, it's best to map these additional items in a devDependencies object.
These things will be installed when doing npm link or npm install from the root of a package, and can be managed like any other npm configuration param. See npm-config(7) for more on the topic.
For build steps that are not platform-specific, such as compiling CoffeeScript or other languages to JavaScript, use the prepublish script to do this, and make the required package a devDependency.
Edit: As of npm 5.0.0 the installed modules are added as a dependency by default, so the --save option is no longer needed.
--save-dev is used to save the package for development purpose. Example: unit tests, minification.
--save is used to save the package required for the application to run.
--save-dev will save npm modules in development dependencies in package.json i.e it will save inside devDependencies object.
--save will save npm modules dependencies in package.json i.e it will save inside dependencies object.
I'm new and I need to use node for off-line use so, I'm trying to understand how the install modules work.
It's the same if I use npm install express or included it in the package.json?
The way a package is installed will be the same whether you manually type npm install express or put it in your package.json and then do npm install. The difference comes when you try to install your Node project elsewhere.
For example, if your code was checked into GitHub and you didn't include a package.json with all of the dependencies listed, then when the project was downloaded you would have to manually re-install all of the dependencies on the command line in order for it to work. But if you had checked in a package.json with the code, then you could run npm install to install all of the dependencies at once, and not have to remember which ones were necessary.
In addition, the package.json allows you to specify an "approximate version" of a dependency to use. This way if a few packages in your project share a dependency and they all specify similar "approximate versions", only one version will be installed and it will be shared between packages. This saves some install time.
Nothing actually. But you don't want to do that again and again. So you might as well put your module dependencies in your package.json
I'm trying to install and use grunt.
I install using npm install grunt -g
it seems to install -
grunt#0.4.3 /Users/me/.node/lib/node_modules/grunt
when I open up a new tab in terminal and run grunt I get
-bash: grunt: command not found
My path looks like this
$ echo $PATH
/Users/me/.rbenv/shims:/Users/me/.rbenv/shims:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/mysql/bin:/usr/local/mysql/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/opt/X11/bin:/usr/local/git/bin
Any advice? This is killing me.
I've installed grunt-cli too, still not working -
npm install grunt-cli -g
/Users/me/.node/bin/grunt -> /Users/me/.node/lib/node_modules/grunt-cli/bin/grunt
I open a new tab
-bash: grunt: command not found
I installed node using the node installer. I'm on OSX.
I've just added /.node/bin to my path, see below -
echo $PATH
/Users/me/.rbenv/shims:/Users/me/.rbenv/shims:/.node/bin:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/mysql/bin:/usr/local/mysql/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/.node/bin:/opt/X11/bin:/usr/local/git/bin
It's still not working.
Your path don't contain ~/.node/bin where apparently your globally installed npm binaries are kept.
You need to fix that if you expect said binaries to be picked-up.
Either way, this points out that you missed a step in your node / npm installation. How did you installed node exactly?
I don't know what other people do, but I'm using node from homebrew, which should take care of that for you (I assume from the paths you list that you are on OSX).
try to install grunt globally
$ sudo npm install grunt -G
You may have Grunt 0.4.3 installed globally but nothing installed locally.
Run $ grunt --version to find which version you are on. At this point you'll only be knowing that you do have Grunt installed in your system. But to run Grunt at the directory level (also known as "project level") you'll need to be specific - because not every project may require the Grunt version you have installed globally.
Create a package.json file in the directory you mean to have your project on. Let's call it the project's root folder.
{
"name" : "MyProject",
"version" : "0.1.0",
"author" : "My name",
"private" : true,
"devDependencies" : {
"grunt" : "~0.4.2"
}
}
Navigate to the project's root folder and run $ npm install. The specified Grunt version will be installed as a dependency to the project.
Smile, you have Grunt up and running! :)
Sometimes another version or just a wrong path is referenced in the npm config file instead of the installed version.
This may cause node/npm to misplace global modules.
To check and fix:
In cmd line type: npm config list
You should get a list of configuration values, one of them is prefix.
Make sure the path in prefix is the same path (only without node.exe) as the actually installed node.exe path.
(this path is listed further down as node bin location)
If it's not, change it:
Either in the config file (in your user folder, named .npmrc)
Or, via cmd line: npm config set prefix "C:\Program Files\nodejs" (change path if needed)
Reinstall the module/package you tried to install, don't forget -g for global.
I'm trying to build the backbone boilerplate project found here: https://github.com/backbone-boilerplate/backbone-boilerplate
I'm having some issues getting it to build properly. Here are the steps I've done which are the steps on the backbone-boilerplate wiki:
git clone https://github.com/backbone-boilerplate/backbone-boilerplate.git
cd backbone-boilerplate
sudo npm install -gq bower
sudo npm install -q
sudo npm install -gq grunt-cli
sudo grunt
At this point I get:
>> Local Npm module "grunt-cli" not found. Is it installed?
Warning: Task "requirejs" not found. Use --force to continue.
Aborted due to warnings.
Any ideas how to get this to build properly?
Specifying depth seems to work:
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/backbone-boilerplate/backbone-boilerplate.git
$ npm install
$ grunt
Also you may want to restart your terminal if that is your first time installing grunt-cli
You're running grunt under elevated privileges. Our documentation for building here:
https://github.com/backbone-boilerplate/backbone-boilerplate#build-process
... has you run that command under your own user. Give that a shot!
You need to ensure you build dependencies with bower, not just the node dependencies.
Getting Started
# Using Git, fetch only the latest commits. You won't need the full history
# for your project.
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/backbone-boilerplate/backbone-boilerplate
# Move the repository to your own project name.
mv backbone-boilerplate my-project
Updating Dependencies
# Install global dependencies. Depending on your user account you may need to
# gain elevated privileges using something like `sudo`.
npm install -g grunt-cli bower
# Optionally install coveralls (integration is baked in with Travis CI).
npm install -g coveralls
# Install NPM dependencies.
npm install
# Install Bower dependencies. ** THIS IS THE ONE YOU'VE MISSED **
bower install
Build Process
# To run the build process, run the default Grunt task.
grunt
# Run a build and test the now optimized assets.
grunt default server:release
If you have node installed correctly this should work like a charm.
Can someone tell me where can I find the Node.js modules, which I installed using npm?
Global libraries
You can run npm list -g to see which global libraries are installed and where they're located. Use npm list -g | head -1 for truncated output showing just the path. If you want to display only main packages not its sub-packages which installs along with it - you can use - npm list --depth=0 which will show all packages and for getting only globally installed packages, just add -g i.e. npm list -g --depth=0.
On Unix systems they are normally placed in /usr/local/lib/node or /usr/local/lib/node_modules when installed globally. If you set the NODE_PATH environment variable to this path, the modules can be found by node.
Windows XP - %USERPROFILE%\AppData\npm\node_modules
Windows 7, 8 and 10 - %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules
Non-global libraries
Non-global libraries are installed the node_modules sub folder in the folder you are currently in.
You can run npm list to see the installed non-global libraries for your current location.
When installing use -g option to install globally
npm install -g pm2 - pm2 will be installed globally. It will then typically be found in /usr/local/lib/node_modules (Use npm root -g to check where.)
npm install pm2 - pm2 will be installed locally. It will then typically be found in the local directory in /node_modules
The command npm root will tell you the effective installation directory of your npm packages.
If your current working directory is a node package or a sub-directory of a node package, npm root will tell you the local installation directory. npm root -g will show the global installation root regardless of current working directory.
Example:
$ npm root -g
/usr/local/lib/node_modules
See the documentation.
For globally-installed modules:
The other answers give you platform-specific responses, but a generic one is this:
When you install global module with npm install -g something, npm looks up a config variable prefix to know where to install the module.
You can get that value by running npm config get prefix
To display all the global modules available in that folder use npm ls -g --depth 0 (depth 0 to not display their dependencies).
If you want to change the global modules path, use npm config edit and put prefix = /my/npm/global/modules/prefix in the file or use npm config set prefix /my/npm/global/modules/prefix.
When you use some tools like nodist, they change the platform-default installation path of global npm modules.
On windows I used npm list -g to find it out. By default my (global) packages were being installed to C:\Users\[Username]\AppData\Roaming\npm.
If you are looking for the executable that npm installed, maybe because you would like to put it in your PATH, you can simply do
npm bin
or
npm bin -g
If a module was installed with the global (-g) flag, you can get the parent location by running:
npm get prefix
or
npm ls -g --depth=0
which will print the location along with the list of installed modules.
Not direct answer but may help ....
The npm also has a cache folder, which can be found by running npm config get cache (%AppData%/npm-cache on Windows).
The npm modules are first downloaded here and then copied to npm global folder (%AppData%/Roaming/npm on Windows) or project specific folder (your-project/node_modules).
So if you want to track npm packages, and some how, the list of all downloaded npm packages (if the npm cache is not cleaned) have a look at this folder. The folder structure is as {cache}/{name}/{version}
This may help also https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/cache
In earlier versions of NPM modules were always placed in /usr/local/lib/node or wherever you specified the npm root within the .npmrc file. However, in NPM 1.0+ modules are installed in two places. You can have modules installed local to your application in /.node_modules or you can have them installed globally which will use the above.
More information can be found at https://github.com/isaacs/npm/blob/master/doc/install.md
To get a compact list without dependencies simply use
npm list -g --depth 0
The easiest way would be to do
npm list -g
to list the package and view their installed location.
I had installed npm via chololatey, so the location is
C:\MyProgramData\chocolatey\lib\nodejs.commandline.0.10.31\tools\node_modules
C:\MyProgramData\ is chocolatey repo location.
As the other answers say, the best way is to do
npm list -g
However, if you have a large number of npm packages installed, the output of this command could be very long and a big pain to scroll up (sometimes it's not even possible to scroll that far back).
In this case, pipe the output to the more program, like this
npm list -g | more
I was beginning to go mad while searching for the real configuration, so here is the list of all configuration files on linux:
/etc/npmrc
/home/youruser/.npmrc
/root/.npmrc
./.npmrc in the current directory next to package.json file (thanks to #CyrillePontvieux)
on windows:
c/Program\ Files/nodejs/node_modules/npm/npmrc
Then in this file the prefix is configured:
prefix=/usr
The prefix is defaulted to /usr in linux, to ${APPDATA}\npm in windows
The node modules are under $prefix tree, and the path should contain $prefix/bin
There may be a problem :
When you install globally, you use "sudo su" then the /root/.npmrc may be used!
When you use locally without sudo: for your user its the /home/youruser/.npmrc.
When your path doesn't represent your prefix
When you use npm set -g prefix /usr it sets the /etc/npmrc global, but doesn't override the local
Here is all the informations that were missing to find what is configured where. Hope I have been exhaustive.
You can find globally installed modules by the command
npm list -g
It will provide you the location where node.js modules have been installed.
C:\Users\[Username]\AppData\Roaming\npm
If you install node.js modules locally in a folder, you can type the following command to see the location.
npm list
Echo the config: npm config ls or npm config list
Show all the config settings: npm config ls -l or npm config ls --json
Print the effective node_modules folder: npm root or npm root -g
Print the local prefix: npm prefix or npm prefix -g
(This is the closest parent directory to contain a package.json file or node_modules directory)
npm-config | npm Documentation
npm-root | npm Documentation
npm-prefix | npm Documentation
Expanding upon other answers.
npm list -g
will show you the location of globally installed packages.
If you want to output that list to a file that you can then easily search in your text editor:
npm list -g > ~/Desktop/npmfiles.txt
From the docs:
In npm 1.0, there are two ways to install things:
globally —- This drops modules in {prefix}/lib/node_modules, and puts executable files in {prefix}/bin, where {prefix} is usually
something like /usr/local. It also installs man pages in
{prefix}/share/man, if they’re supplied.
locally —- This installs your package in the current working directory. Node modules go in ./node_modules, executables go in
./node_modules/.bin/, and man pages aren’t installed at all.
You can get your {prefix} with npm config get prefix. (Useful when you installed node with nvm).
From the docs:
Packages are dropped into the node_modules folder under the prefix.
When installing locally, this means that you can
require("packagename") to load its main module, or
require("packagename/lib/path/to/sub/module") to load other modules.
Global installs on Unix systems go to {prefix}/lib/node_modules.
Global installs on Windows go to {prefix}/node_modules (that is, no
lib folder.)
Scoped packages are installed the same way, except they are grouped
together in a sub-folder of the relevant node_modules folder with the
name of that scope prefix by the # symbol, e.g. npm install
#myorg/package would place the package in
{prefix}/node_modules/#myorg/package. See scope for more details.
If you wish to require() a package, then install it locally.
You can get your {prefix} with npm config get prefix. (Useful when you installed node with nvm).
Read about locally.
Read about globally.
Windows 10: When I ran npm prefix -g, I noticed that the install location was inside of the git shell's path that I used to install. Even when that location was added to the path, the command from the globally installed package would not be recognized. Fixed by:
running npm config edit
changing the prefix to 'C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\npm'
adding that path to the system path variable
reinstalling the package with -g.
In Ubuntu 14.04 they are installed at
/usr/lib/node_modules
For Windows 7, 8 and 10 -
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules
Note:
If you are somewhere in folder type cd .. until you are in C: directory. Then, type cd %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules. Then, magically, %USERPROFILE% will change into Users\YourUserProfile\.
I just wanted to clarify on ideas referred by Decko in the first response. npm list -g will list all the bits you have globally installed. If you need to find your project related npm package then cd 'your angular project xyz', then run npm list. It will show list of modules in npm package. It will also give you list of dependencies missing, and you may require to effectively run that project.
Btw, npm will look for node_modules in parent folders (up to very root) if can not find in local.
If you're trying to access your global dir from code, you can backtrack from process.execPath. For example, to find wsproxy, which is in {NODE_GLOBAL_DIR}/bin/wsproxy, you can just:
path.join(path.dirname(process.execPath), 'wsproxy')
There's also how the npm cli works # ec9fcc1/lib/npm.js#L254 with:
path.resolve(process.execPath, '..', '..')
See also ec9fcc1/lib/install.js#L521:
var globalPackage = path.resolve(npm.globalPrefix,
'lib', 'node_modules', moduleName(pkg))
Where globalPrefix has a default set in ec9fcc1/lib/config/defaults.js#L92-L105 of:
if (process.env.PREFIX) {
globalPrefix = process.env.PREFIX
} else if (process.platform === 'win32') {
// c:\node\node.exe --> prefix=c:\node\
globalPrefix = path.dirname(process.execPath)
} else {
// /usr/local/bin/node --> prefix=/usr/local
globalPrefix = path.dirname(path.dirname(process.execPath))
// destdir only is respected on Unix
if (process.env.DESTDIR) {
globalPrefix = path.join(process.env.DESTDIR, globalPrefix)
}
}
If you have Visual Studio installed, you will find it comes with its own copy of node separate from the one that is on the path when you installed node yourself - Mine is in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\NodeJs.
If you run the npm command from inside this directory you will find out which node modules are installed inside visual studio.