Not sure where to install node packages on Windows 10 - npm

I'm having trouble installing node packages. I know that packages are now installed to AppData\Roaming on WIN10, but for me this is an issue because my company's login script makes my user profile set to another drive, for example U:\
So when I use npm to install a package, like typescript, the package gets installed to the wrong directory and a global package is not found.

Changing my .npmrc file to the below resolved the issue.
prefix=${APPDATA}\npm
Thanks to nodejs npm global config missing on windows

Related

Does npm install have an equivalent to pip install --no-deps?

I'm more familiar with the Python ecosystem at this point and have a question about how I can do something with npm that I'm used to doing with pip.
Let's say I have a wheel for a particular Python package, as well as a wheel file for each of the Python package's dependencies. And let's say I have all these wheel files in a folder called /path/to/wheel/files. To install this package and all of its dependencies, I could run something like pip install /path/to/wheel/files/*.whl --no-deps, where --no-deps keeps me from having to install the various dependencies in the proper order.
Does npm have an equivalent to this? I'm using npm-offline-packager to create a tarball that contains a Node package (as its own tarball) and all of its dependencies (as their own tarballs). I know I can tell npm install to install a particular tarball. However, when I do this, it tries pulling in the required dependencies from the online NPM registry instead of pulling in the dependencies from the tarballs I already have.
Ideally, I'd like npm install to use the tarballs to add the main package to my project's package.json while adding the package's dependencies to my project's package-lock.json. And of course, I'd also like the main package and all its dependencies to be installed to my project's node_modules directory as well.
TL;DR Does npm have something equivalent to pip install /path/to/wheel/files/*.whl --no-deps?
I'm responding to my own question here, but note that my answer is only applicable to my particular use case and may not be applicable in general.
For my use case, I have access to two computers: one that has access to the internet and one that doesn't. For the machine that doesn't have access to the internet, I was attempting to use Verdaccio as a way of creating a self-hosted NPM registry. However, publishing packages to Verdaccio wasn't working because it kept trying to pull in the package's dependencies from the public NPM repository. The solution was to remove all references to "npmjs" in Verdaccio's config file (which, for me, Verdaccio created at ~/.config/verdaccio/config.yaml).
So, in case anyone needs to do development on a machine that doesn't have access to the internet, the process for setting up Verdaccio looks something like this:
On the machine that has access to the internet, create an NPM project using npm init (I called my project "verdaccio_runner"). The reason I did this is because, without already having an NPM registry on the machine that doesn't have access to the internet, it was hard doing a global install of Verdaccio.
Run npm install verdaccio to install Verdaccio to the NPM project that was created in the previous step.
Transfer this project over to the machine that doesn't have access to the internet.
Once it's transferred over, run Verdaccio from the project like this: npx verdaccio.
Quit out of Verdaccio.
Remove all references to "npmjs" from the config file that Verdaccio created (again, mine was at ~/.config/verdaccio/config.yaml).
Run Verdaccio again to pull in those changes.
Tell NPM where your private registry is: npm config set registry http://localhost:4873/.
Add yourself as a user by running npm adduser and by then filling out the information you're prompted for.
And the process for publishing packages to Verdaccio on a machine that doesn't have access to the internet looks like this:
For the package you want to install, on the machine that has access to the internet, run npo fetch <package name> --no-cache (assuming you've already done a global install of npm-offline-packager on the machine that has internet access).
Bring the tarball that npo created for you over to the machine that doesn't have internet access.
Untar the tarball.
From the directory that's created, run for file in ./*.tgz; do npm publish $file; done.
The published packages can now be npm installed to projects on the machine that doesn't have internet access.
Note: in order for Verdaccio to be accessible to other machines on the private network, I also had to add the following to Verdaccio's config file:
listen:
0.0.0.0:4873

npm doesn't uninstall packages

I've been trying to remove some packages that I installed with npm but it doesn't remove them. After running npm uninstall -g package the package is still executable in my terminal and it is still in the path where npm binaries are being installed.
Also, why is npm installing packages in ~/.local/share/npm/bin/ ? It's the first time that I've seem npm installing packages there. I had a problem a few weeks ago when installing some language servers but they weren't executable, turns out I had to add ~/.local/share/npm/bin to my $PATH because that's where npm was installing everything. And now npm doesn't remove any package installed there. I've already look into the npm config (npmrc) but I don't see any option changing the install path. The only environment variable related to npm that I have is to set the user config in ~/.config/npm instead of ~/.npmrc.
I have others machines with the exact same settings and npm it's not installing packages in ~/.local/share/npm/bin/ and I'm able to uninstall packages normally.
Does anyone knows whats wrong with npm ?
npm --version 7.8.0
my config:
cache=/home/user/.cache/npm
init-module=/home/user/.config/npm/config/npm-init.js
package-lock=false
tmp=/run/user/1000/npm
Okay I noticed that if I reinstalled the packages that I couldn't remove they went into a different folder /user/bin/ with the node_modules being in /user/lib/node_modules. Before it was in ~/.local/share/npm/lib. Now with the packages were they belong I can't remove them without issues. No idea why those packages were originally installed in a different path.

Verdaccio, npm offline

How do I move Verdaccio from my development machine that has internet into an environment that has no connection? I tried install from a tarball but was still trying to reach out to npm to install? Wish there was an exe installer.
Also when I do npm install -g verdaccio I get a python error node-gyp. Is Python required to use Verdaccio? I don't see that in the documentation
I figured it out. I installed verdaccio with the --no-optional flag and then just copied the files over. I build the storage while online and set cache to true so all the packages copy and all works offline.

Is there any difference between installing global packages with Yarn or NPM?

Does it matter whether you install a global package with yarn global add PACKAGE vs npm install -g PACKAGE ?
Is there any difference at all, like where files are installed?
If yes, what is it?
So yes, you are right it is different. For npm it is something like below
/Users/tarunlalwani/.nvm/versions/node/v9.2.0/lib if you are using nvm
You can get this path using
$ npm config get prefix
/Users/tarunlalwani/.nvm/versions/node/v9.2.0
Where does npm install packages?
While yarn uses other paths
Windows: %LOCALAPPDATA%/Yarn/config/global
OSX and Linux non-root: ~/.config/yarn/global
Linux if logged in as root: /usr/local/share/.config/yarn/global
How to display yarn globally installed packages?
See this thread as well
https://github.com/yarnpkg/yarn/issues/2049
This is the document about Yarn global
yarn global is a prefix used for a number of commands like add, bin,
list and remove. They behave identically to their normal versions
except that they use a global directory to store packages. The global
command makes executables available to use on your operating system
and this is the document about npm install global mode
In global mode (ie, with -g or --global appended to the command), it
installs the current package context (ie, the current working
directory) as a global package.
I think there is no difference between them. Install a package as a global useful for developer tooling that is not part of any individual project but instead is used for local commands

Speeding up NPM package install

When I deploy my app to AWS, it's copied into a new directory, so NPM will install all the same packages, during each deploy, which can take a lot of time. Most of these packages haven't changed between builds (if at all), so having it do a full npm-install seems like a waste.
My app server runs a bunch of different Node apps, so installing globally isn't an option. Instead I'd like to have the app store it's node packages in a location that isn't wiped out during deployment, but have the option to update packages as necessary during npm install.
Does NPM have a concept of an app-specific module directory that isn't located in a subfolder of an app? That way I can delete the app folder, and not have to reinstall the same packages over and over again.
I could achieve this by using symlinks, or migrating the current node_module directory.
If you lock down your dependencies versions, NPM is likely to cache the packages. So the installation wouldn't take much longer.
If you prefer not to do this, you can install dependencies globally and link them with the npm link command (which is basically creating a symlink yourself!). Then, it'll be up to you update the globally installed packages regularly.