How to use executables from a package installed locally in node_modules?

Question

How do I use a local version of a module in node.js. For example, in my app, I installed coffee-script:

npm install coffee-script

Answer 1

Include coffee-script in package.json with the specific version required in each project, typically like this:

"dependencies":{
  "coffee-script": ">= 1.2.0"

Then run npm install to install dependencies in each project. This will install the specified version of coffee-script which will be accessible locally to each project.

Answer 2

For Windows use this:

/* cmd into "node_modules" folder */
"%CD%\.bin\grunt" --version

Answer 3

If you want to keep npm, then npx should do what you need.

---

If switching to yarn (a npm replacement by facebook) is an option for you, then you can call:

 yarn yourCmd

scripts inside the package.json will take precedence, if none is found it will look inside the ./node_modules/.bin/ folder.

It also outputs what it ran:

$ yarn tsc
yarn tsc v0.27.5
$ "/home/philipp/rate-pipeline/node_modules/.bin/tsc"

So you don't have to setup scripts for each command in your package.json.

---

If you had a script defined at .scripts inside your package.json:

"tsc": "tsc" // each command defined in the scripts will be executed from `./node_modules/.bin/` first

yarn tsc would be equivalent to yarn run tsc or npm run tsc:

 yarn tsc
 yarn tsc v0.27.5
 $ tsc

Answer 4

UPDATE: As Seyeong Jeong points out in their answer below, since npm 5.2.0 you can use npx [command], which is more convenient.

OLD ANSWER for versions before 5.2.0:

The problem with putting

./node_modules/.bin

into your PATH is that it only works when your current working directory is the root of your project directory structure (i.e. the location of node_modules)

Independent of what your working directory is, you can get the path of locally installed binaries with

npm bin

To execute a locally installed coffee binary independent of where you are in the project directory hierarchy you can use this bash construct

PATH=$(npm bin):$PATH coffee

I aliased this to npm-exec

alias npm-exec='PATH=$(npm bin):$PATH'

So, now I can

npm-exec coffee

to run the correct copy of coffee no matter of where I am

$ pwd
/Users/regular/project1

$ npm-exec which coffee
/Users/regular/project1/node_modules/.bin/coffee

$ cd lib/
$ npm-exec which coffee
/Users/regular/project1/node_modules/.bin/coffee

$ cd ~/project2
$ npm-exec which coffee
/Users/regular/project2/node_modules/.bin/coffee

Answer 5

Use the npm bin command to get the node modules /bin directory of your project

$ $(npm bin)/<binary-name> [args]

e.g.

$ $(npm bin)/bower install

Answer 6

zxc is like "bundle exec" for nodejs. It is similar to using PATH=$(npm bin):$PATH:

$ npm install -g zxc
$ npm install gulp
$ zxc which gulp
/home/nathan/code/project1/node_modules/.bin/gulp