install.js

An insane solution to an inane problem

It doesn’t really contribute to the future sanity of the node packaging environment, but when the node packaging environment becomes more sane (hopefully, eventually, we will see the day!), install.js won’t be useful anymore.

TL;DR: It’s a hack.

What it does

Install a package from npm globally by symlinking it from your user folder

You should only use install.js if you know that you want to use it.

As in, if you know that you want:

• To install a script globally
• Without installing it directly to /usr/local
• By placing its installation files in a directory on your home folder

It’s a pretty specific use case, and most users will never want for more than just a regular npm install -g that places all their modules in the same location. But if there are specific modules you’d like to symlink from elsewhere (say, to save space on the drive your OS is mounted on), it can help.

Hey, there’s a bunch of weird output over here

Because it’s fairly difficult to tell whether an install and link works correctly, install.js will warn you when it isn’t sure if a step succeeded. For instance, npm i can give some pretty scary output even when it works 100% correctly. So install.js will dutifully relay that output, then attempt to keep going anyway.

That’s because when you’re installing packages and you aren’t npm, you kinda just try a few things and hope one works. There’s seemingly no rhyme or reason sometimes to why a package gives an error during installation, and it’s fairly hard to tell, for instance, if npm link does the work of lnbin for it, so install.js just tries everything and lets you know when those things (sometimes incorrectly) report that they have failed.

Why use install.js instead of symlinking the entire node_modules directory?

Because symlinking the entire node_modules directory can have some really weird side effects with certain packages. (This is speaking from experience.)

Usage

$ install.js yo

call registryGet
GET http://registry.npmjs.org/yo
call tarballDownload
tar download
pipe out to /tmp/***
call extractTarball
...
# (etc.)

$ yo

? ‘Allo, User! What would you like to do? (Use arrow keys)
...
# (etc.)