Reading · Alex DeLorenzo · RSS Amplifier

After running this script, you will be able run npm install -g without sudo, becausenpm will install packages as your non-root user. The script will set up npm user directories for you, and then add them to your $PATH.

Packages can then be installed without root privileges:

$ npm install -g yarn
$ type yarn
yarn is /home/user/.npm-packages/bin/yarn

Usage

Run the following:

$ curl -s "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alexdelorenzo/npm-user/main/npm-user.sh" | bash

You can check out the script’s requirements here.

Options

The script takes 6 optional positional arguments, or you can set environment variables:

Position	Variable name	Description	Default value
1	`$ROOT`	The root directory for `npm`	`$HOME`
2	`$SHELL_NAME`	Name of the shell to configure	Current shell
3	`$SHELL_RC`	Shell configuration file, automatically detected	`$HOME/.profile`
4	`$BIN`	`npm`’s executable directory	`$ROOT/.npm-packages/bin`
5	`$MAN`	Manpage directory for `npm`	`$ROOT/.npm-packages/share/man`
6	`$REINSTALL`	Set to any non-null value to reinstall old `npm` packages in your new `$ROOT`	Unset

Passing options

If you want to set your npm path to ~/.local/.npm-packages, instead of ~/.npm-packages, and configure zsh to work with it, you can run:

$ export URL="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alexdelorenzo/npm-user/main/npm-user.sh"
$ curl -s "$URL" | bash -s "~/.local" "zsh"

You can also use environment variables:

$ export ROOT="~/.local" SHELL_NAME="zsh"
$ curl -s "$URL" | bash

Confirming it works

Install a package with the global flag -g and then see where npm puts the files:

$ npm install -g yarn
$ type yarn
yarn is /home/user/.npm-packages/bin/yarn

Requirements

Click here to see the dependencies and supported systems for this script

Dependencies

Bash, GNU Coreutils and grep
curl
NPM

Supported systems

Shells

This script works with configuration files for the following shells:

bash
zsh
fish
sh

The script will default to $HOME/.profile if it doesn’t recognize any of the shells from above. ksh uses $HOME/.profile, but the script wasn’t tested on it.

Operating systems

This script will work on any POSIX compatible system or compatibility layer.

Linux
*BSD
macOS
WSL 1 & 2 on Windows
Cygwin or MSYS2 on Windows

Script

You can check out the script on GitHub via the 🏠 npm-user project.

Click here to show 🏠 npm-user source code below

How to install npm packages as a non-root user