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Say you want to install a library lib-a which has dependencies dep-1 and dep-2. If lib-a has declared in its package.json to use a version of dep-2 that is out of date (say it doesn't work on node 0.8.0 which just came out), but there is a branch of dep-2 that works with node 0.8.0 - branch name node0.8.0.

So the packages in the equation are:

git://github.com/user-a/lib-a git://github.com/user-b/dep-1 git://github.com/user-c/dep-2 git://github.com/user-c/dep-2#node0.8.0

Is there a way to tell NPM to install lib-a, but use dep-2#node0.8.0 instead of dep-2?

With NPM you can install a specific branch of a project like this:

npm install git://github.com/user-c/dep-2#node0.8.0

And if I were to customize the package.json of lib-a, you could tell it to use dep-2#node0.8.0 like this:

{ "name": "lib-a", "dependencies": { "dep-1": ">= 1.5.0", "dep-2": "git://github.com/user-c/dep-2#node0.8.0" } }

By modifying the package.json you can then run

npm install lib-a

and it will install the node 0.8.0 compatible dep-2 branch. But, that requires I have access to modifying lib-a, which for my specific case I don't. Technically, I could fork lib-a and make the above change to package.json. But in my specific case, lib-a is a dependency of another library, so I'd have to fork the project it's referenced in, and on and on...

So the question is, is there a way to tell NPM to install lib-a, and tell it to use the node0.8.0 branch of dep-2? Something like this:

npm install lib-a --overrides dep-2:git://github.com/user-c/dep-2#node0.8.0

That would be awesome. If it's not possible, that would be good to know so I can prepare myself to have to fork/customize the chain of projects.

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1 Answer 1

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NPM install syntax:

npm install (with no args in a package dir) npm install <tarball file> npm install <tarball url> npm install <folder> npm install [@<scope>/]<name> [--save|--save-dev|--save-optional] [--save-exact] npm install [@<scope>/]<name>@<tag> npm install [@<scope>/]<name>@<version> npm install [@<scope>/]<name>@<version range> npm i (with any of the previous argument usage)

so you can choose one of these methods to install your modules.

The case of the simplest way to install a specific version is this one:

npm install [email protected]

more info: https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/install

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8 Comments

It looks like if you install the dependency first, then the other libraries that require that dependency won't download their own. That solves the problem! Thanks!
Is that correct? I tried npm -g install /path/to/my/fork-with-fix and then npm -g install package-which-should-use-forked-dependency-with-fix and ... it still downloads official version.
Have a look at npm link.
Yeah, this answer really doesn't answer the question as I understand it at all. Lance Pollard's comment above seems to be the answer but I'm not sure under what circumstances I should be able to count on that behaviour. c.f. stackoverflow.com/questions/15806152/… which discusses npm shrinkwrap as another potential solution
Looks like the behaviour @LancePollard's discovered in his comment is documented by npmjs.org/doc/cli/npm-install.html#ALGORITHM — if an alternate (but still "satisfying") dependency is already installed "further up the tree" as it were, then the buggy one will mercifully NOT get installed as a sub-submodule.
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