I'm trying to install Gulp for my Angular UI project and I'm a bit surprised by the fact that it won't install due to it's dependencies. So, node installed fine, but npm.js refuses to install due to file path too long error. My folder structure is 75 characters long, of the 260 available characters, that leaves 185 characters for npm to use. Am I missing something here, or do the npm authors expect me to fire up a linux box for my UI? (A deal breaker)
Update:
What is the best way to install gulp as a dependency for my Angular UI project? (My goal is to ultimately have gulp become part of my TFS CI)
Ignoring your path length problem for now (you may want to split your question), as far as how to get gulp installed, you just need to include it in your package.json file as a dependency.
You can do that by running npm install --save gulp
However, that does need npm installed first.
The easiest way to do this is to download and install Node from:
https://nodejs.org/en/download/
This will install Node and npm globally, which should avoid your path length problem and in my experience is the standard approach (I've not worked with TFS, but all other CI pipelines I've worked with support Node via a container image or build option/step).
If you dont want to manually install Node, you can use something like Chocolatey to install it automatically (you can install Chocolatey from https://chocolatey.org/ and then you can run choco install nodejs from your command line).
Related
This question applies to either npm or yarn and I would like to know if what I need to do can be done with one or the other or both. For the sake of clarity I will only refer to yarn commands as I would prefer the yarn solution.
I have a bash script where I conditionally yarn upgrade a node package that is guaranteed to be in the package.json file but has not yet been installed. I would like to potentially reduce the number of times I call yarn install. As it stands I need to call yarn install and then yarn upgrade but I don't need to because I will be calling yarn install later in the script.
I think I can save a call to yarn install (via a yarn upgrade) in my script by simply updating the version number for the node package I want upgraded in package.json but then do not actually install any of those files since I will be calling yarn install at a later time in the script.
I would simply like to change the version number of a specific node package without installing any files using either a yarn or npm command. If this is not possible is this a good use case to parse package.json by hand and insert the version number with brute force?
Dependencies can be added to your package.json without installing them by using npm-add-dependencies
You can use it on-they-fly via npx, for example:
npx add-dependencies browser-sync-webpack-plugin#^2 browser-sync#^2 --dev
This will add browser-sync-webpack-plugin version ^2 and browser-sync version 2^ to devDependencies in your package.json
Should I need to do a npm install for SPFX if I have already done a global install of all the modules required by SPFX?
Restoring modules is very slow, and I'd really like to avoid doing it if necessary.
To get started coding faster you can start yeoman like this in CMD:
yo #microsoft/sharepoint --skip-install
Open project in preferred IDE, for example VS Code and start coding with:
code .
Start npm install in background with:
npm install
Continue coding in your IDE while npm installs in the background!
I do not recommend to install all spfx packages global. Each project can use different versions of packages. And for each project there is separate node modules folder used to build and package solution. Maybe there is a way to point build and package from globally installed packages but as i wrote there could be huge differences between versions ... just run npm i and take a coffee 😉
I'm installing gulp on a new machine after 2 years of not having gone through the process and for some reason running npm install gulp --save-dev is installing 318 dependencies. Am I doing something wrong? I couldn't find any info on the gulp site that mentions this change on v.4.0.2 so I'm really scratching my head here.
Thanks
When you use npm install even to upgrade or to retrieve stored files inside a machine npm silently installs the updated dependencies without taking any permission from the user. It might be possible that npm may have installed a testing or beta version dependencies too, guess you have to take a look in appdata if you are using windows.
You're not doing anything wrong. It genuinely does have that many dependencies:
Generated by npm.broofa.com
As an aside, it's interesting to compare how much this has changed over time: #3.9.1, #3.0.0, #1.2.1
I have a jenkins build that is failing with the following error:
+ npm install
npm WARN prefer global coffee-script#1.12.4 should be installed with -g
Curious as to why coffee-script, or any package for that matter, needs to be installed globally?
Because coffeescript is a command line tool which can transpile coffeescript into javascript, or run as as an interactive shell similar to node.
from the NPMJS docs:
There are two ways to install npm packages: locally or globally. You choose which kind of installation to use based on how you want to use the package.
If you want to use it as a command line tool, something like the grunt CLI, then you want to install it globally. On the other hand, if you want to depend on the package from your own module using something like Node's require, then you want to install locally.
It would technically be possible to install these CLI packages locally, but then you would have to run them using a relative path such as(untested):
./node_modules/coffeescript/bin/coffeescript
This might be a stupid question but I believe I should know this since I am just starting out in the web development field rather than just assuming. I normally see this
Install via npm or bower (recommended) or manually download the package
or something of that sorts. My Assumption is that the node_module and bower_component updates the packages automatically, however I am not sure.
Sometimes I install with npm or bower, or sometimes I just mannually download the package to which I have seen no difference. Could someone please tell me why it is important to install via npm or bower so I can know for sure what is going on.
Package managers allow you to keep third party code separate from your code and have consistent versions of that code. With npm or bower you can set out exactly what dependencies you project has, and what versions through a single file, without having to bloat your codebase with the dependencies themselves.
This means that anyone who wants to set up the project can just download the core code and run npm install or the equivalent command, and install all the dependencies at the latest supported version.