node.js - How to npm install global not as root?

Question

I'm on a unix box where I don't have root access.

I changed my .npmrc file (in my user's root directory) to:

prefix=~/global_npm

Now when I do "npm install -g packagename" it installs inside my global_npm directory. Which is good. And then I gave myself path access to it by updating my .bashrc file with:

export PATH=$PATH:~/global_npm/bin

Do I need to do anything else? I think I need to set NODE_PATH but I'm not sure?

Answer 1

Sindre Sorhus has a great guide at github.com/sindresorhus/guides which I've reposted here.

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Install npm packages globally without sudo on OS X and Linux

npm installs packages locally within your projects by default. You can also install packages globally (e.g. npm install -g <package>) (useful for command-line apps). However the downside of this is that you need to be root (or use sudo) to be able to install globally.

Here is a way to install packages globally for a given user.

1. Create a directory for your global packages

mkdir "${HOME}/.npm-packages"

2. Reference this directory for future usage in your .bashrc/.zshrc:

NPM_PACKAGES="${HOME}/.npm-packages"

3. Indicate to npm where to store your globally installed package. In your $HOME/.npmrc file add:

prefix=${HOME}/.npm-packages

4. Ensure node will find them. Add the following to your .bashrc/.zshrc:

NODE_PATH="$NPM_PACKAGES/lib/node_modules:$NODE_PATH"

5. Ensure you'll find installed binaries and man pages. Add the following to your .bashrc/.zshrc:

PATH="$NPM_PACKAGES/bin:$PATH"
# Unset manpath so we can inherit from /etc/manpath via the `manpath`
# command
unset MANPATH # delete if you already modified MANPATH elsewhere in your config
MANPATH="$NPM_PACKAGES/share/man:$(manpath)"

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Check out npm-g_nosudo for doing the above steps automagically

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NOTE: If you are running OS X, the .bashrc file may not yet exist, and the terminal will be obtaining its environment parameters from another file, such as .profile or .bash_profile. These files also reside in the user's home folder. In this case, simply adding the following line to them will instruct Terminal to also load the .bashrc file:

source ~/.bashrc