Problem with making Capistrano run the shell tasks (nodejs deploying) - node.js

Question

I am using capistrano to deploy a node.js application, and have a
problem with setting the shell tasks.
For instance, thought I have npm installed this fails:
run "npm install"
npm not found
and when I use
run "/opt/nvm/'cat /opt/nvm/alias/default'/bin/npm install"
the error is node not found
The deploy is managed by a special user for deploy.
Could you please tell what might cause this problem and how to solve it?

Answer 1

Using NVM and Capistrano is working for me by running the command through bash and sourcing the nvm.sh file first.
My NVM is installed in /opt/nvm, so the npm install task could look something like this:
namespace :npm do
desc 'Install the current npm environment.'
task :install do
invoke_command "bash -c '. /opt/nvm/nvm.sh && cd #{current_path} && npm install'", :via => run_method
end
end
So no need of manually setting the path to the binaries by reading the alias file from NVM.

Answer 2

Sounds like the npm/node executables are not on the $PATH for the remote user that is executing the Capistrano script.
You should double check which user Capistrano is running as and what the $PATH is (and correcting as required)

Answer 3

I ended up adding this to my Capfile
set :default_environment, {
'PATH' => "$PATH:/usr/local/ruby/bin/:/home/ubuntu/.nvm/v0.10.21/bin"
}

Answer 4

In the meantime (more than a year back tho) I've created a Capistrano extension for easy nvm usage: https://github.com/koenpunt/capistrano-nvm
The extension will map node and npm by default, but you can add any executable that needs nvm to run to it (eg. grunt).
A basic setup would work by adding the following to your deploy.rb:
require 'capistrano/nvm'
set :nvm_type, :user # or :system, depends on your nvm setup
set :nvm_node, 'v0.10.21'
set :nvm_map_bins, %w{node npm}

Answer 5

I was able to affect node version changes by adding lines like the following to my capistrano deploy scripts:
execute :'. ~/.nvm/nvm.sh && nvm use vOLDER_VERSION && nvm alias default vOLDER_VERSION'
execute :npm, 'install', '--silent --no-progress'
execute :npm, 'run', 'build'
execute :'. ~/.nvm/nvm.sh && nvm use stable && nvm alias default stable'
Where vOLDER_VERSION is the version of choice.
The way this works is it sources nvm, sets it to use the specified version, and sets that version as default. It then reverts those changes after the npm steps have been run. This way other parts of the deploy or other deploys still get to use the latest version.
If you don't care about other deploys you could just run that step once for your deployer user:
su deployerUser
nvm use vOLDER_VERSION
nvm alias default vOLDER_VERSION