npm-link
Symlink a package folderTable of contents
Synopsis
npm link (in package dir)
npm link [<@scope>/]<pkg>[@<version>]
alias: ln
Description
This is handy for installing your own stuff, so that you can work on it and test iteratively without having to continually rebuild.
Package linking is a two-step process.
First, npm link
in a package folder will create a symlink in the global
folder {prefix}/lib/node_modules/<package>
that links to the package
where the npm link
command was executed. It will also link any bins in
the package to {prefix}/bin/{name}
. Note that npm link
uses the global
prefix (see npm prefix -g
for its value).
Next, in some other location, npm link package-name
will create a
symbolic link from globally-installed package-name
to node_modules/
of
the current folder.
Note that package-name
is taken from package.json
, not from the
directory name.
The package name can be optionally prefixed with a scope. See
scope
. The scope must be preceded by an @-symbol and
followed by a slash.
When creating tarballs for npm publish
, the linked packages are
"snapshotted" to their current state by resolving the symbolic links, if
they are included in bundleDependencies
.
For example:
cd ~/projects/node-redis # go into the package directory
npm link # creates global link
cd ~/projects/node-bloggy # go into some other package directory.
npm link redis # link-install the package
Now, any changes to ~/projects/node-redis
will be reflected in
~/projects/node-bloggy/node_modules/node-redis/
. Note that the link
should be to the package name, not the directory name for that package.
You may also shortcut the two steps in one. For example, to do the above use-case in a shorter way:
cd ~/projects/node-bloggy # go into the dir of your main project
npm link ../node-redis # link the dir of your dependency
The second line is the equivalent of doing:
(cd ../node-redis; npm link)
npm link redis
That is, it first creates a global link, and then links the global
installation target into your project's node_modules
folder.
Note that in this case, you are referring to the directory name,
node-redis
, rather than the package name redis
.
If your linked package is scoped (see scope
) your
link command must include that scope, e.g.
npm link @myorg/privatepackage
Caveat
Note that package dependencies linked in this way are not saved to
package.json
by default, on the assumption that the intention is to have
a link stand in for a regular non-link dependency. Otherwise, for example,
if you depend on redis@^3.0.1
, and ran npm link redis
, it would replace
the ^3.0.1
dependency with file:../path/to/node-redis
, which you
probably don't want! Additionally, other users or developers on your
project would run into issues if they do not have their folders set up
exactly the same as yours.
If you are adding a new dependency as a link, you should add it to the
relevant metadata by running npm install <dep> --package-lock-only
.
If you want to save the file:
reference in your package.json
and
package-lock.json
files, you can use npm link <dep> --save
to do so.
Workspace Usage
npm link <pkg> --workspace <name>
will link the relevant package as a
dependency of the specified workspace(s). Note that It may actually be
linked into the parent project's node_modules
folder, if there are no
conflicting dependencies.
npm link --workspace <name>
will create a global link to the specified
workspace(s).
Configuration
save
- Default:
true
unless when usingnpm update
where it defaults tofalse
- Type: Boolean
Save installed packages to a package.json
file as dependencies.
When used with the npm rm
command, removes the dependency from
package.json
.
Will also prevent writing to package-lock.json
if set to false
.
save-exact
- Default: false
- Type: Boolean
Dependencies saved to package.json will be configured with an exact version rather than using npm's default semver range operator.
global
- Default: false
- Type: Boolean
Operates in "global" mode, so that packages are installed into the prefix
folder instead of the current working directory. See
folders for more on the differences in behavior.
- packages are installed into the
{prefix}/lib/node_modules
folder, instead of the current working directory. - bin files are linked to
{prefix}/bin
- man pages are linked to
{prefix}/share/man
global-style
- Default: false
- Type: Boolean
Causes npm to install the package into your local node_modules
folder with
the same layout it uses with the global node_modules
folder. Only your
direct dependencies will show in node_modules
and everything they depend
on will be flattened in their node_modules
folders. This obviously will
eliminate some deduping. If used with legacy-bundling
, legacy-bundling
will be preferred.
legacy-bundling
- Default: false
- Type: Boolean
Causes npm to install the package such that versions of npm prior to 1.4,
such as the one included with node 0.8, can install the package. This
eliminates all automatic deduping. If used with global-style
this option
will be preferred.
strict-peer-deps
- Default: false
- Type: Boolean
If set to true
, and --legacy-peer-deps
is not set, then any
conflicting peerDependencies
will be treated as an install failure, even
if npm could reasonably guess the appropriate resolution based on non-peer
dependency relationships.
By default, conflicting peerDependencies
deep in the dependency graph will
be resolved using the nearest non-peer dependency specification, even if
doing so will result in some packages receiving a peer dependency outside
the range set in their package's peerDependencies
object.
When such and override is performed, a warning is printed, explaining the
conflict and the packages involved. If --strict-peer-deps
is set, then
this warning is treated as a failure.
package-lock
- Default: true
- Type: Boolean
If set to false, then ignore package-lock.json
files when installing. This
will also prevent writing package-lock.json
if save
is true.
This configuration does not affect npm ci
.
omit
- Default: 'dev' if the
NODE_ENV
environment variable is set to 'production', otherwise empty. - Type: "dev", "optional", or "peer" (can be set multiple times)
Dependency types to omit from the installation tree on disk.
Note that these dependencies are still resolved and added to the
package-lock.json
or npm-shrinkwrap.json
file. They are just not
physically installed on disk.
If a package type appears in both the --include
and --omit
lists, then
it will be included.
If the resulting omit list includes 'dev'
, then the NODE_ENV
environment
variable will be set to 'production'
for all lifecycle scripts.
ignore-scripts
- Default: false
- Type: Boolean
If true, npm does not run scripts specified in package.json files.
Note that commands explicitly intended to run a particular script, such as
npm start
, npm stop
, npm restart
, npm test
, and npm run-script
will still run their intended script if ignore-scripts
is set, but they
will not run any pre- or post-scripts.
audit
- Default: true
- Type: Boolean
When "true" submit audit reports alongside the current npm command to the
default registry and all registries configured for scopes. See the
documentation for npm audit
for details on what is
submitted.
bin-links
- Default: true
- Type: Boolean
Tells npm to create symlinks (or .cmd
shims on Windows) for package
executables.
Set to false to have it not do this. This can be used to work around the fact that some file systems don't support symlinks, even on ostensibly Unix systems.
fund
- Default: true
- Type: Boolean
When "true" displays the message at the end of each npm install
acknowledging the number of dependencies looking for funding. See npm fund
for details.
dry-run
- Default: false
- Type: Boolean
Indicates that you don't want npm to make any changes and that it should
only report what it would have done. This can be passed into any of the
commands that modify your local installation, eg, install
, update
,
dedupe
, uninstall
, as well as pack
and publish
.
Note: This is NOT honored by other network related commands, eg dist-tags
,
owner
, etc.
workspace
- Default:
- Type: String (can be set multiple times)
Enable running a command in the context of the configured workspaces of the current project while filtering by running only the workspaces defined by this configuration option.
Valid values for the workspace
config are either:
- Workspace names
- Path to a workspace directory
- Path to a parent workspace directory (will result in selecting all workspaces within that folder)
When set for the npm init
command, this may be set to the folder of a
workspace which does not yet exist, to create the folder and set it up as a
brand new workspace within the project.
This value is not exported to the environment for child processes.
workspaces
- Default: null
- Type: null or Boolean
Set to true to run the command in the context of all configured workspaces.
Explicitly setting this to false will cause commands like install
to
ignore workspaces altogether. When not set explicitly:
- Commands that operate on the
node_modules
tree (install, update, etc.) will link workspaces into thenode_modules
folder. - Commands that do other things (test, exec, publish, etc.) will operate on the root project, unless one or more workspaces are specified in theworkspace
config.
This value is not exported to the environment for child processes.
include-workspace-root
- Default: false
- Type: Boolean
Include the workspace root when workspaces are enabled for a command.
When false, specifying individual workspaces via the workspace
config, or
all workspaces via the workspaces
flag, will cause npm to operate only on
the specified workspaces, and not on the root project.
This value is not exported to the environment for child processes.
install-links
- Default: false
- Type: Boolean
When set file: protocol dependencies that exist outside of the project root will be packed and installed as regular dependencies instead of creating a symlink. This option has no effect on workspaces.