Re: Node no longer searching global library?
On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 3:45 PM, Tom Hughes <tom(a)compton.nu> wrote:
Am I going mad, or is there a bug that means node is no longer
searching the
global library directory by default?
node has never done this in Fedora proper. Whether or not you are
going mad depends on whether you used my old repository and/or are
used to Debian's behavior in this regard. ;-)
This is a deliberate design decision by node and npm upstream which
Fedora respects. For more information on why, see:
https://www.npmjs.org/doc/faq.html#I-installed-something-globally-but-I-c...
Our packaging guidelines are intended to ensure that RPM-provided
modules work exactly like ones installed by `npm install -g`, and can
be used in local modules easily using `npm link`. You can also set
NODE_PATH=/usr/lib/node_modules in your environment to make npm and
rpm installed modules available universally.
This is also documented here:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Node.js#Using_modules_installed_via_yum
While node does have support for a global search path for historical
reasons, upstream advises that it not be used. I did use it* for
module packaging with my old repo, and people complained about it
semi-frequently. Mostly because it makes it easier to forget to add
dependencies to your package.json when you have modules from RPM
require()able universally.
*Acutally node_modules and /usr/lib/node were symlinked together,
which made npm install -g put stuff in the global search path, making
it even more awful. :-(
-T.C.
[Sorry for the long explanation which probably says stuff you already
know, but I've said this a dozen times in other venues so I wanted to
repeat the whole spiel so it gets archived here too. :-)]