I have a web app: fooapp. I have a package.json in the root. I want to install all the dependencies in a specific node_modules directory. How do I do this?
What I want
Lets say I have two widget dependencies. I want to end up with a directory structure like this:
node_modules/ widgetA widgetB fooapp/ package.js lib .. What I get
when I run npm install fooapp/ I get this:
node_modules/ fooapp/ node_modules/ widgetA widgetB package.js lib/ .. fooapp/ package.js lib/ .. npm makes a copy of my app directory in the node_modules dir and installs the packages inside another node_modules directory.
I understand this makes sense for installing a package. But I don't require() my web app inside of something else, I run it directly. I'm looking for a simple way to install my dependencies into a specific node_modules directory.
3 Answers
Running:
npm install from inside your app directory (i.e. where package.json is located) will install the dependencies for your app, rather than install it as a module, as described here. These will be placed in ./node_modules relative to your package.json file (it's actually slightly more complex than this, so check the npm docs here).
You are free to move the node_modules dir to the parent dir of your app if you want, because node's 'require' mechanism understands this. However, if you want to update your app's dependencies with install/update, npm will not see the relocated 'node_modules' and will instead create a new dir, again relative to package.json.
To prevent this, just create a symlink to the relocated node_modules from your app dir:
ln -s ../node_modules node_modules In my case I need to do
sudo npm install my project is inside /var/www so I also need to set proper permissions.
7Just execute
sudo npm i --save That's all
