I'm very new to Node Package Manager and also Vue, and I'm trying to understand what exactly is going on with using the Vue CLI.
The vue.js website has this as instructions for running the official Vue CLI:
I have a few questions about this:
Does npm install --global vue-cli need to be executed only once on a machine, or once on a directory, or once per new project you're starting? In other words, once it's on your computer, is that the last time you need to run that command, or do you need to execute this command every single new project you start?
Once a new project is initiated, are local copies of the newest version of vue (and vue-router, if selected) installed?
If I finish this project and want to deploy it, how do I then port this over to a production server?
Once in a machine, except for the rare cases where one is isolating one's npm install (such as by using nodeenv or inside a container); that's what the global option is for.
After running npm install, yes.
Running npm run build and copying the contents of the resulting dist directory to the production machine (often within a /var/www directory or similar). This can be automated further in many ways.
Related
I'm currently using NextJS and to run a production build, I use npm run build followed by npm run start. This all works well on my local machine.
However, I need to deploy this app on an offline machine where I may not have an internet connection to install all the node packages.
I've taken a look at npm pkg and npm pack utilities, but not quite sure which is the best one to use in the context of a nextjs app.
Would appreciate any advice on the best way to do this.
Edit: thinking along the lines of how I would build my maven project and have a .jar output which I can use to deploy to any other machine as a single deployable file.
Say I have a node.js application (some web server for the manner of sake). So I have a directory structure with a src which contains my code and a package.json which includes some metadata about my project and all the packages needed to run it. So I run npm install to get all the packages and run node server.js to run the application.
I have a CI pipeline for my application that upon PR to master runs tests, and if succeeds, merges to master. The next step I want is to deploy the application on a server.
This means that eventually I need my source code plus all the dependencies on the server, and run node server.js.
Is it correct to publish my application as a package (as part of the CI pipeline), and then on the server run npm install to fetch it? Or is npm installing packages only makes sense for packages that serve as some functionality for other applications?
The reason I doubt this is that when you run npm install (at least on a directory with a package.json) you get all the packages in the node_modules directory, which makes me believe that the second option I stated is true.
NOTE
The application is running on a Windows server, no Dockers.
I took a Vue 2 online course and it did show (but didn't really explain) how to install node.js, npm and vue. Currently using vue-cli to set up my project using vue init webpack-simple. Problem is I have a Windows desktop and a Mac laptop. I'm using Box cloud on both but I need to have 2 separate folders for the same project. Basically, project-1-windows and project-1-mac.
I can't run npm run dev on the project-1-mac while on Windows 10 and vice versa. The only way I know to run both is to delete the node_modules folder and run npm install. However it takes a while for the files to download. Is there an easier way to do this?
It looks like you want either GitHub/BitBucket/friends or (for much more complex set-ups) Docker.
I will explain only the first (easier) option. To set-up docker, you rather go to its docks.
So, for GitHub/BitBucket/friends way, you need some one-time set-up (you have to do all of this in terminal of your machine. I don't go too deep into details because you may find corresponding docks for each thing easily by googling it).
Install git if needed on both machines. On mac, you just run git --version in terminal. It'll either show the version of installed git or will ask if you want to install git together with other developer tools.
Install brew on Mac, install any of these on Windows. These are just package managers. Use them to install nvm.
Install nvm (it's node version manager, arguably the most convenient way to manage node.js installations) on both machines.
Use nvm to install node.js (npm comes bundled with it) on both machines. That's it! One-time set-up done. Run node -v && npm -v to check that both are installed.
Now, to start each project you would do the following:
Create a repo (which is like a folder but on GitHub/BitBucket server) that you may freely access from any device that has internet connection.
Start project on any of your machines with something like npm init or vue init webpack-simple or whatever you feel comfortable with.
Run git init
When you do changes, commit & push them into your online repo.
Avoid committing files that might be auto-regenerated, they simply don't worth storing.
You may use any npm commands.
When you want to continue working on another machine, simply git clone your existing repo, run npm install and you are done.
Commit changes if needed.
git pull changes to another device if needed
I have installed Node JS and then imported an existing work project in Visual Studio Code. After that I ran npm install in the project folder, then run npm start and the app comes up fine. However, if I run an ng command I get an error telling me "ng is not valid command", even though the Angular CLI is in the modules folder.
I tried manually installing Angular CLI globally and set system path to point to the npm folder, and then the ng command works fine. What I don't understand is why do I need to install CLI globally if I just want to run that command within the project where the module is already present?
As a general rule then you will need to install globally any commands you wish to use (without NPX). This isn't really a restriction of NPM so much as it is a fundamental way in which command line programs work. The OS will only look in fixed predefined locations set in PATH. This applies to any Node based tool such as grunt or ng or whatever.
(While some systems do look for executables relative to the current working directory, or can be configured to, it's generally not a good or reliable method and NPM doesn't rely on this behaviour).
For something like the Angular CLI then installing it globally should be fine and is what many people will do. As a general rule if it is a command you want to run, rather than a dependency for a project, you can consider installing it globally. You'll notice that on the Angular CLI page the example does exactly that.
In many cases however you might want to run a command from a local project. Perhaps for a build script or something else where you want to keep it isolated. In that case you instead prefix your command with npx which will look inside the local project for commands.
I'm new to node.js. After creating modularized project with express, tests, .nvmrc etc. it's finally time to deploy the app. How it should be done? in java you bundle your project into a single file, self containing and you put in into a server with some configuration. what about node.js?
Should i just copy the whole directory with sources and node_modules to production machine and use systemd, pm2 or other process manager to just run it? but i heard some of the dependencies might be system-dependend so they may work incorrectly
or should i copy only sources and run npm install --production on the production machine? but this way the deployment is only possible when npm repositories are online. also it takes time to build the application and it has to be done on all machines in the cluster. also what about quickly rolling back to previous version in case there is some bug? again, time and online npm repos are needed
another option is to build a docker image. but it seems awkward that the only way to easily and safely deploy the app is using third party technology
how it's being done in real life scenarios?
sure don't copy the whole directory especially node_modules.
all the packages installed on your system should be installed with --save option example: npm install --save express if you do so you will have in your package.json the dependencies required for your project whether they are dev dependencies or production dependencies.
I don't know what your project structure looks like, but as a node application you have to run npm init . in your project to setup the package.json file and then you can start adding your dependencies with --save.
usually we use git
version control system
to deploy to the server, first we push our code to a git repository then we pull from it to the server git
you have to add .gitignore in your project and ignore node_modules from being committed to your git repository.
then you can pull to your server and run npm install on the server. and sure you need to launch your web server to serve your application example ngnix
you can try Heroku for an easy deployment, all you have to do is to setup your project with Heroku, and when you push your code, Heroku manages the deployment . Heroku