CODEWITHSUNDEEP
node.jsubuntunpm
user1229323
user1229323

Reputation:

How to update npm after set a local node prefix

I've installed nodejs + npm on my Ubuntu machine using the following commands:

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup | bash -
apt-get install -y nodejs

And, in order to use yeoman without sudo I used the following commands:

echo prefix = ~/.node >> ~/.npmrc
export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/.node/bin"

After that, I can't update the NPM. If I run npm update -g npm the version number doesn't change, but, if I run the update command before the echo prefix command, the update works and npm is updated.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1668

Answers (2)

Nurza
Nurza

Reputation: 231

If you want a well updated nodejs + npm :

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.js
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nodejs
sudo npm update -g npm

Et voilà!

Upvotes: 0

Jay
Jay

Reputation: 3515

update

You have node + npm installed. By default npm uses /usr/lib/node_modules/ directory to install global modules. Non-priveledged users normally don't have write access to that directory and as such, cannot install npm packages globally.

The command echo prefix = ~/.node >> ~/.npmrc tells npm to install global packages to ~/.node/node_modules instead of usr/lib/node_modules.

After calling:

echo 'export PATH=$HOME/.node/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.bashrc

all npm packages which provide binary scripts are added to $PATH (e.g. yo, browserify) but also npm.

npm package is managed via npm package manager itself. The following command updates npm to the latest version:

npm install -g npm

previous answer

NodeSource provides a binary build of nodejs + npm.

In usage instructions they say to run both commands as admin for Debian systems:

sudo curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup | bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs nodejs-legacy

The most important line in the setup script is this:

 echo 'deb https://deb.nodesource.com/node ${DISTRO} main' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nodesource.list

node + npm should be installed on your system globally now. Updates should be managed by apt-get from now on.

From what I can tell, you have another node + npm installed in your ~/.node directory. I am not sure why you need it. As far as I know global npm packages are installed into ~/.npm directory and they don't interfere with npm binary installed by apt-get.

In any way, if you really want to use your custom node installation from ~./node/bin, you should export $PATH this way:

export PATH="$HOME/.node/bin:$PATH"

Also you can export $PATH automatically by adding this command to ~/.bashrc file:

echo 'export PATH=$HOME/.node/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.bashrc

*NIX looks for binary files (e.g. npm) in each directory specified in $PATH. It goes from left to right and executes the first matching binary file it finds. Somewhere in $PATH variable you have /usr/bin. If you want to npm / node from ~/.node/bin to be found first, you should put that directory further to left in the $PATH environment variable.

Upvotes: 1

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