npm install not making symlinks for local dependencies

Question

As I understand it from the npm docs, npm i /path/to/mylib should normally create a symlink of node_modules/mylib-> /path/to/mylib. However when I run that npm i command above, npm will not create symlinks but actually create a copy of the package in node_modules. Despite that my package.json will read "mylib" : "file:/path/to/mylib".

I want it to be a symlink since I am still working on the libraries I am adding in this project.

How can I make these symlinks?

node version 16.15.0
npm version 9.1.1

Niall · Accepted Answer · 2023-02-21 08:05:36Z

10

The change

This was a breaking change with npm v9. The release notes are available here.

Including this detail on the option;

install-links config defaults to "true"

In particular, there is this note in the release of node v18.4 here, motivating the change;

Explanation: install-links is the only config or command in the list that has an effect on package installs. We fixed a number of issues that came up during prereleases with this change. It will also only be applied to new package trees created without a package-lock.json file. Any install with an existing lock file will not be changed.

In our use case, this broke the build and a change to the intended use of the functionality to begin with.

If set to false, then the "current/old/pre v9" behaviour is restored.

Restoring the behaviour

Depending on the use case, there seem to be two options to consider;

Add the option --install-links=false to the command line. Good for single use cases.
Add the line install-links=false to the .npmrc file in the project root. Seems to be the better option for CI/CD environments.

Note: the package-lock file format may have to be version 3 (or above) for the above to work.

edited Feb 21, 2023 at 8:05

answered Feb 20, 2023 at 17:43

Niall

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1 Comment

Daniel Kaplan May 19, 2025 at 0:02

It seems to have changed back to false by default again.

isherwood · Accepted Answer · 2024-06-03 16:09:43Z

2

I believe that your use case you should probably just use npm link.

If you're working on an application and one of its dependencies at the same time, you can use npm link to share the dependencies' project code inside your consuming application project.

It's a two step process:

cd into dependency folder (eg ~/code/calculation-sdk) and run npm link
cd into your main folder (eg ~/code/payment-service) and run npm link calculation-sdk

This will keep your code linked in both AND you still have the benefits of a clean npm based process.

If you want to clean everything up (eg delete the link), simply npm uninstall as you normally would.

Here's a nice article.

edited Jun 3, 2024 at 16:09

isherwood

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answered Nov 16, 2022 at 13:00

dangarfield

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