Cannot get "npm install -g" to work on any packages (AppData/Roaming/npm always empty)

Question

Running nodejs on Windows 7 Enterprise at work.

Whenever I install a node_module that needs -g access, from experience I know it's supposed to create a *.bat file in %AppData$/Roaming/npm, but for some reason it no longer does that.

For example, I will run npm install gulp -g, console looks like it installed correctly, but the files will not be in the AppData folder. And if I try running a gulp command, I get error sh.exe": gulp: command not found.

If I run the npm install gulp -g command in Console As Administrator, it installs the files into the %AppData% folder of the administrator (instead of the regular user). So if I run the gulp command through my non-administrator user, I still get error sh.exe": gulp: command not found.

Any ideas?

Coffeng

Answer 1

Found solution:

(1) Upon running the command: npm config get prefix, output is C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\local. No idea why it was set to this, as it's not the default.

But I changed it using: npm config set prefix "$APPDATA\npm".

Now when I install a --g module, ie. npm install gulp -g, it installs into this desirable directory, no longer throwing EPERM and ENOENT errors.

(2) Still need to add a PATH entry for the npm folder. The command export PATH=$PATH:/c/Users/{YOUR_USERNAME}/AppData/Roaming/npm works temporarily, but if you close console and open it again, might not be saved (if you are not an administrator).

But you can also use echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/c/Users/{YOUR_USERNAME}/AppData/Roaming/npm' >> ~/.bash_profile, which will create a .bash_profile file, which is run each time as your console is opened. So from this point, it should automatically add the required PATH entry.

Coffeng

Spent hours looking for a solution that would work. Thanks! – Howund

I wasted hours on this too. Pppppppppppppp. Software development, amaright? – Coffeng

For exporting the path you may also edit the system environment variable; path = %appdata%/npm; – Molnar

Like Div Tiwari said, edit your system environment variables and then close your command line and reopen it. It will working. – Adularia

Thanks a lot for the solution. In my case a folder $Appdata/npm/ was getting created which was leading to the confusion. – Drislane

Answer 2

I also faced this same issue.

After installing node.js(https://nodejs.org/en/download/) npm folder(in appdata folder) remain empty.

so, at this stage if you try to build/run angular project(ng build/ng serve), it will give error as:

The term 'ng' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. 

So, for fixing this issue install angular globally in your project with following command:

npm install -g @angular/cli

Now, there would be data in npm folder(node modules etc.) and ng command will run now.

Erethism

After hours of searching this was the only answer which managed to help me out. – Orwin

I too spent the last 3 hours fiddling with environment variables, uninstalling and reinstalling node, and everything else. Nothing worked. This quickly did. Thanks. – Foray