I am trying to install the latest npm, following the instructions on the npm doc site.
My problem is that using command:
npm install -g npm
to get the latest version of NPM does not seem to work: it does not seem to install any of the needed dependencies, so when I run it I get errors such as:
module.js:340
throw err;
^
Error: Cannot find module 'are-we-there-yet'
at Function.Module._resolveFilename (module.js:338:15)
at Function.Module._load (module.js:280:25)
at Module.require (module.js:364:17)
at require (module.js:380:17)
at Object.<anonymous> (/home/harmic/.node_modules/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/npmlog/log.js:2:16)
at Module._compile (module.js:456:26)
at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:474:10)
at Module.load (module.js:356:32)
at Function.Module._load (module.js:312:12)
at Module.require (module.js:364:17)
I am using a Centos 6 machine, so I started by installing node + npm from EPEL, like this:
yum install nodejs npm
That went OK. I then went to install the latest npm, as recommended at the above link and many other pages I've seen. My first attempt
sudo npm install -g npm
was not so great, for two reasons:
It installed in
/usr/lib/node_modules, over the top of the original RPM installation. I judged this to be extremely poor practice, because the next time I didyum updateon the system there was every chance the newly installed files would be overwritten by whatever incoming RPM packages contained, leaving an unholy mess.It did not work anyway: I could not start npm at all, it constantly complained of missing dependancies as described above.
So I uninstalled the RPMs, removed all the left over files, then reinstalled the RPMs again. This time I created a ~/.npmrc file and put this in it:
prefix = ${HOME}/.node_modules
I also set NODE_PATH environment variable to include that path. After this, npm did install itself in my desired location, but did not install any dependencies:
$ npm install -g npm
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/npm
npm http 304 https://registry.npmjs.org/npm
/home/harmic/.node_modules/bin/npm -> /home/harmic/.node_modules/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npm-cli.js
npm@3.3.3 /home/harmic/.node_modules/lib/node_modules/npm
Running it from the new installed path gave the error at the top of the page.
Despite thinking that I must be doing something seriously wrong, I set about trying to install the unmet dependencies, one at a time:
npm install -g are-we-there-yet
npm install -g gauge
npm install -g os-tmpdir
npm install -g os-homedir
npm install -g is-absolute
npm install -g asap
npm install -g path-is-absolute
npm install -g builtins
npm install -g validate-npm-package-license
npm install -g concat-stream
npm install -g json-parse-helpfulerror
npm install -g readdir-scoped-modules
npm install -g debuglog
npm install -g lodash._baseclone
npm install -g lodash._bindcallback
npm install -g lodash._baseflatten
npm install -g lodash._baseuniq
...
and still it complains about needing more.
Finally I have concluded that I must have missed something important, so I decided to ask for the help of the SO community...
The initially installed versions of node & npm RPMs are:
- nodejs-0.10.36-3.el6
- npm-1.3.6-5.el6
Oh and in case you are wondering, the reason I am trying to update npm in the first place is because when trying to install this package I ran into a build error, the solution to which is apparently to install an updated npm.
