Using local npm executables

When developing NodeJS apps, it used to be common practice to install module dependencies in a central node_modules folder. Now, it's recommended to install dependencies for each project separately. This allows fine-grained control over specific modules and versions needed for each application and simplifies installation of your package when you're ready to ship it.  It does require more disk space, but these modules are mostly very small.

For example if your project had this package.json file, running npm -install would create a node_modules sub-directory and install express and mocha into it:

{

  "name": "awesome-app",

  "version": "0.0.1",

  "dependencies": {

    "express": "3.0.0rc3"

   ,"mocha": "latest"

  }

}

It's also fairly common to install some modules globally, using npm -g, if they provide command-line utilities. For example, if you wanted to have jslint available to all users on your system, you'd do this:

sudo npm -g install jslint

which would place this in /usr/local/bin/jslint.

If you specify a dependency in your package.json file, and that module includes an executable -- like jslint, for example, or mocha -- then npm install will automatically place those executables in your project's node_modules/.bin directory. To make use of these, add this prefix to your $PATH in your ~/.bashrc file:

export PATH=./node_modules/.bin:$PATH

This allows each one of your NodeJS projects to independently specify, install and use not only packages that are required in your JavaScript code, but also the command-line tools you need for testing, linting, or otherwise building your app.